“A glided cage is still a cage” (Lady Hale, in the Cheshire
West case)
Warning - this one's really long (there's a brief summary at the end though, so feel free to skip to that if you like).
I’m also aware that as I’m writing this a
bunch of excellent folks on Twitter are digging out very similar questions to
me, so apologies when I’m repeating what someone else has already expressed
more pithily than me.
The sections of the four page document are as follows,
providing a handy guide in themselves to the plan’s preoccupations:
·
Addressing the problem
·
Commissioning appropriate local placements
·
Capital Implications
·
Revenue Savings
·
Long term contracts
·
A National Framework locally delivered
·
Future Considerations for the NHS
Addressing the problem
To paraphrase, this states that:
·
The Winterbourne View programme has failed (“out
of a total of 2,615 patients, only 256 have a transfer date”).
·
The voluntary sector are the people to sort it
(with the “capability and aspiration”, “deep knowledge and experience of this
client group”, and “extensive operational expertise and national reach”).
In terms of a plan, the final point is the crucial one,
stating that:
“The numbers of clients (estimated at 1,702) are not
impossibly high to deal with (between them, the charities represented at the
ACEVO meeting alone support tens of thousands of people each year, including
with supported housing) and the sector is in a position to directly develop local
services that meet the needs of children and adults with a learning disability
and behaviour that challenges.”
This final point makes me doubt where the group as convened
does have the “deep knowledge and experience” required to make the task a
success:
First, I’m not convinced they know their numbers. The 2,615 “patients”
number they mention is from the latest commissioning returns, but this is
likely to be an underestimate as some people in specialist inpatient services
aren’t known to commissioners and the overall number of people in specialist
inpatient services is going up, not down (see
http://chrishatton.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/now-is-winterbourne-of-our-discontent.html
).
Second and more worryingly, I don’t know where the
suspiciously exact figure of 1,702 “clients” comes from. In a relatively recent
post (see
http://chrishatton.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/how-low-can-you-go-how-many-people-with.html
) I tried to present what we know about the number of people with learning
disabilities in various types of specialist inpatient services under the broad
label used by NHS England. I also tried to tease out the implications in terms
of how many people, with the right support available in the community, did not
need to be in inpatient settings. Looking at these numbers again, I wonder if
this plan is ignoring all those people with learning disabilities in various
types of forensic inpatient settings (perhaps all those commissioned by NHS
specialist commissioners rather than locality-based clinical commissioning
groups?). To my mind (and others too) this group of people absolutely needs to
be included rather than excluded from a national action plan.
Commissioning appropriate local placements
Again, to my mind this section also shows a misunderstanding
of some fundamental issues. I know it makes for a long post, but most of this
section is worth quoting directly:
·
Regardless of the reasons why patients have been
classified as not appropriate for transfer to the community, it remains the
case that people have ended up in long stay, large-scale hospital services
because appropriate local services have not been effectively commissioned.
·
This has increased and perpetuated the use of
long term hospital placements which are poor value for money and far removed
from home. This is a key stumbling block for successful transfer.
·
It has therefore the view of the ACEVO group
that the key to transferring current patients out of hospital placements is the
development of cost effective and sustainable local housing and support
solutions as soon as possible.
·
This will help to overcome other barriers to
transfer that have been identified.
·
We understand that the numbers are debated and
that they may be higher than the stated position, especially as patients in
crisis continue to be admitted. This is largely the case because there is no
other crisis support available
·
That is why we propose that as well as
commissioning local placements for existing patients, there should be a two
pronged approach to ensuring that there are no more inappropriate admissions.
This will involve:
o
1. Strongly linking the national transfer programme
to a national closure programme. This has the added advantage of reducing the
risk of double-funding placements;
o
2. Creating a national crisis support service
that local authorities can draw on instead of inappropriately sending patients
into ATUs. The model that we are most interested in developing is small scale
emergency support and care homes specifically for clients with a learning
disability who are in crisis.
First, understanding the reasons why people have been judged
to be not appropriate for moving out is, I believe, rather fundamental to
achieving a successful closure. This is a particularly resistant part of the
system that many Winterbourne View Joint Improvement Programme local initiatives
have foundered on, and it needs to be understood and measures taken to do
something about it.
Second, the inpatient services for people with learning
disabilities being discussed here are absolutely not “long stay, large-scale
hospital services”. This is a really worrying misunderstanding – we’re not
talking about closing big, old institutions here that were designed to
(ware)house people for life. These inpatient services are usually small, often
quite new (indeed purpose built, which we’ll come to later), and have an
ostensibly assessment and treatment rationale. Some ‘lessons’ (gah!) from other
closure programmes are transferable but in many respects the terrain is quite
different.
Third, I agree that the lack of provision of appropriate
local services is a major reason for people ending up in inpatient services. I’m
unconvinced that the magic bullet for overcoming all the ‘barriers to transfer’
(an aside: the dehumanising language of this document is quite astonishing) is
only the “development of cost effective and sustainable local housing and
support solutions as soon as possible”. It ignores completely the role of
commissioners, the interests of inpatient service providers and the crisis of resources
within public services and the devalued role of people with learning
disabilities within our society, and it raises the very obvious question to me
of if it’s so straightforward, why hasn’t it happened already? I also wonder
how phrases like “cost effective and sustainable” will play out in terms of
people’s actual lives?
The two prongs of the proposal mention firstly a ‘national
closure programme’. No more attention is given to what this should be and how
it could be made to happen. The Winterbourne View Joint Improvement Programme
has been trying to do this for some time and not succeeded on its own terms,
and the DH Minister Norman Lamb has stated he doesn’t have the levers of power
to force it to happen. So this issue seems worth more attention than a throwaway
line that suggests the closure programme is someone else’s job.
The second prong is to create a “national crisis support
service that local authorities can draw on instead of inappropriately sending
patients into ATUs. The model that we are most interested in developing is
small scale emergency support and care homes specifically for clients with a learning
disability who are in crisis.” Erm, I hate to break it to you at ACEVO, but
word for word this is a description of what Assessment and Treatment Units would
say they are currently doing.
Capital Implications
In my reading, this section is largely concerned with how to
raise £10 million for voluntary sector service providers to build housing for
people with learning disabilities moving out of inpatient services. The
rationale for such a capital investment programme in purpose-built housing is
that challenging behaviour is “strongly influenced by their environment and how
it is managed”. My understanding of “environment” in this context is that it is
much more about interpersonal environments than a built housing environment, and
it is very individual. This plan also ignores the mental health issues and
traumatic life histories that some people will be carrying with them.
Based on this understanding I am unclear why purpose built
housing is necessary (will housing designs be individualised to each person?
What happens if they move house?), rather than finding existing suitable
housing in a place where the person wants to live and will afford active
engagement with people’s worlds beyond their house. And how big will these
purpose built houses be? Will people be “allowed” to move house? And if there’s
then an empty “bed”, will someone else be slotted in, old-school? These sound
like group homes to me, ignoring the hard-won insights from supported living,
person-centred planning and personalisation (of which there is no mention in
this plan).
I’m struggling a bit to understand the money/social
investment bit, and I’m more than happy to be set straight on this. Even with
my limited/absent understanding, I’m not completely convinced of the maths on
this:
·
So – Mencap raised a £10 million bond (in my
understanding, a fancy name for a loan?) which they used to provide housing services
for ‘over’ 137 people with learning disabilities.
·
On this basis, the plan concludes that it costs
£10 million to develop housing solutions for 150 people (not 137 people?), it
will therefore cost £150 million for capital investment to house 2,000 people
[er, wouldn’t this be 2,250 people?].
The plan is to raise 90% of the money, so £135 million, from
‘social investors’ (apparently the Treasury’s Libor Fund will stump up 10%). My
knowledge of social investment is restricted to some googling today, and my
simplistic view is that in this context social investors have funds (like
venture capitalists) which they would lend to fund the capital programme at an
undetermined rate of interest? (if these services are provided by big voluntary
sector organisations I’m assuming they wouldn’t want an equity stake in them?).
As with any loan/mortgage, this would mean no big public investment up front,
but at the literal cost of interest paid to the investor (of which a little
more in a bit).
Revenue Savings
There are a lot of figures here, but I think it comes down
to the assumptions in the plan that existing inpatient services cost £3,500 per
week per person, and that the voluntary sector could deliver community-based,
purpose built services for the same group of people 40% cheaper (not a great
deal of evidence is provided for the second part of this assumption).
So on their assumptions there are 1,702 people (or is it
2,000 people, or 2,250?) to whom this would apply. Currently, they are costing
£309.8 million per year (or £364 million? Or £409.5 million? – think the
differences in assumptions are starting to stack up).
The plan states that services could be provided for £185.9
million (saving £123.9 million) (or £218.4 million, saving £145.6 million? Or
£245.7 million, saving £163.8 million?).
And over the 10-year cycle recommended in this plan as
necessary for the contracts (never mind the assumptions made here about whether
the people in these services will want to stay in the same house for 10 years,
or whether they might want to stay in their house while changing how and who
supports them?), even without inflation we’re talking about savings of £1.24 billion (or £1.46 billion? Or £1.64 billion?)
These savings are crucial for the social investment model
mentioned earlier. Remember that this plan relies on social investors to invest
£135 million at beginning for building the purpose built houses. My
understanding is that the return for investors will come out of this notional ‘saving’.
If this is right, then a major problem I have with this model is that a big
slug of public money that could be reinvested into better community supports at
a time when they’re really needed, ends up in the pockets of social investors.
If social investors expect a return of only 2% over 10 years, then they make
£29.5 million profit on their £135 million investment; 3% gets you £46.4
million profit; 5% gets you £84.9 million profit and 10% gets you £215.2
million profit.
Perhaps the most crucial line in this section is the final
one: “This is a cashable saving that would be prioritised for repaying
investors’ capital, but in theory a
portion could be returned to the NHS.” [my italics]. So perhaps the model for
the social investor is to take all the
savings?
Long term contracts
This section has just four points, which are repeated in
full below:
·
A key principle for the success of this project
would be commissioning for long term contracts of around 10 years.
·
This supports the development of partnerships,
reduces risk to providers and maximises efficiency and effectiveness for
commissioners.
·
A short-term approach will limit the potential
for social investment and therefore reduce the financial savings that can be
achieved.
·
The other major consideration is the stability
of clients. The consistency and continuity of their care is paramount and would
be put at risk if providers changed regularly.
Essentially, this insists on 10-year contracts jointly
cooked up with commissioners and providers, with no flexibility or autonomy for
the people with learning disabilities living with them. People may want
stability, they may not, and there is no Plan B for what happens if the service
is failing (unless the plan assumes that such failures cannot happen in the
voluntary sector).
A National Framework, locally delivered and Future
Considerations for the NHS
On my reading, the final two sections of the plan essentially
park all the difficult issues that the operational elements of the plan have resolutely
ignored, including issues of accountability, what to do about commissioners,
local authorities and social care generally, and supporting people with learning
disabilities so they stop going into these services in the first place. To me,
this reveals the essential nature of the plan. When looking at all sorts of
plans and policies, I’m increasingly asking myself the “Cui bono?” question. To
whose benefit? I’ll stop there.
A quick summary (if I put this at the beginning no-one would
read it!)
·
It misunderstands the situation of people with
learning disabilities in inpatient services
·
It ignores a large group of people with learning
disabilities in inpatient services who really need to be included
·
It shoves the thorny issue of how to actually
close existing inpatient services elsewhere
·
It aims to partly replace short term assessment
and treatment units with, erm, short term assessment and treatment units
·
It misunderstands the nature of challenging
behaviour and proposes expensive and unnecessary purpose built accommodation
will is likely to replicate some of the shortcomings of group homes
·
The social investment model takes large amounts
of scarce public money out of supporting people with learning disabilities,
rather than investing that money into better support for people with learning
disabilities
·
The plan ties commissioners and providers into
collusive 10-year block contracts, recreating some of the worst aspects of the current
system to the detriment of people with learning disabilities
·
The plan parks, hives off or ignores most of the
thorny issues that prevented the Winterbourne View Joint Improvement Programme
being successful, while extracting a significant amount of public money over a
long period of time towards large voluntary sector providers and social
investment
PS: The unconscious is a strange and wonderful thing. Exodus by Bob Marley and the Wailers has just come on my headphones...
