WHORLTON HALL – I always try my best writing about Outstanding care, but I cannot sit here just pretending I have not seen this.
Whorlton Hall hospital near Bernard Castle in the county of Durham has been filmed by BBC panorama evidencing abusive and disgusting care. Cygnet (OE) Ltd owns Whorton Hall hospital care for people with mental health disabilities as per CQC registration.
Cygnet Healthcare
Cygnet Health care provides 21 CQC registered services including Whorlton Hall hospital. Out of these three services has been severely providing poor quality of care as per CQC. r Peter Francis Smith was the responsible individual and Mr John Christopher Shield was the Registered Manager respectively for Whorlton Hall. Although the CQC has cancelled the registration, the old report is still visible published in May 2018 during which the hospital was rated Good by CQC.
What did CQC say end of 2017?
According to the inspection report published in December 2017, the service was rated Good in all the domains. Some of the comments in the report were
“Staff were qualified, experienced, received regular supervision, were appraised, received mandatory training and had access to specialist training.”
“Danshell reported on 31 May 2017 that there had been no complaints received about Whorlton Hall in the previous 12 months. Staff were motivated and morale within the team was positive”
“We observed staff interacting with patients in a kind, respectful and dignified manner throughout our inspection and patients and carers who spoke with us said staff treated them well and as individuals”
“Patients were not placed in seclusion and physical restraint was only used as a last resort because staff were trained in de-escalation practices”
What happened in 2018?
In March 2018, CQC reinspected the same hospital due to whistleblowing concerns on staffing and patient safety, culture and incident monitoring. CQC report mentioned the following after the inspection
“During the inspection visit, the inspection team:
• Spoke with the service manager
• Spoke with the divisional managing director for the service
• Spoke with 13 other staff members; including nurses, health care assistants, a doctor and domestic staff • Observed meal times
• Observed a team meeting
• Reviewed five care records
• Spoke with six patients
• Spoke with two carers”
CQC published a report stating
“We found the following areas of good practice: Staff were kind, caring and respectful towards the patients and knew the patients well”
God bless panorama
BBC panorama the with the footage of horrible care the patients received at Whorton Hall. It was heartbreaking to sit and watch until the end. It was a tragic story of how people with learning disabilities were mistreated.
If you have not seen the programme yet, click here. But be prepared and do not have children near you while watching this.
There were many, of using extremely abusive and explicit language to trigger mental torture for vulnerable people instilled by so-called ‘carers’ including a Registered Nurse. (She is not going to have the NMC Pin for too long). If she doesn’t lose her pin number watching her colleague’s cruelty towards the patients, I will give up my nursing license because I would believe the value of real nursing will be lost.
Olivia Davies – Thank you
Olivia is the superhero who decided to go undercover as a care worker to expose these morons. Three cheers to you my dear friend. If at least, a minority of the people working in care has the courage like what you have done, Britain would be a great place to be a patient. It is not, we need more Olivia’s.
What to believe?
Although CQC was celebrating the release of panorama and shouting about ‘please report any concerns you have about care’ on twitter, I decided to scan the responses. I was absolutely shocked to see the responses of the public including the healthcare professionals losing trust in CQC. (Attached photos). I always believe in values of CQC guidance and delivered a service which was rated Outstanding. Then I see the other side of the story where CQC knew this abuse was happening and tried to brush it off under the carpet the concerns about Whorlton Hall as disclosed by Ex- CQC inspector Barry Stanley-Wilkinson in Linkedin. If it is true why did it happen? Instructed by whom? Whoever responsible will have to answer and face prosecution.
Winterbourne, Orchid View, Mid-staff, Whorlton Hall and What next?
This abuse is going to happen again. It is time to find the root cause and do something about it to prevent it.
System revision – It was revised once following Frances report. Is all 290 recommendations were implemented or not? There is a lot of blame on lack of resources within the care industry. We do not need money to buy compassion and caring attitude and raise concerns when things are not going well.
Revision of inspection – It is time to relook at the quality of inspectors while doing an inspection. I do quality check for care homes which sometimes takes me until very late evening to finish. I am surprised how inspectors manage to get an inspection done within four to five hours for a care home. Is it laziness? or lack of quality?
Reporting and acting: CQC tend to brush off complaints by stating ‘ we are not an investigative agency’. It is time to ask if a regulator is not curious and investigative how can they ensure the quality of the service they are an inspection. A review in this aspect is required.
CCTV in care – Jayne Connery, an amazing lady who campaigns for CCTV in care homes (and now it will have to be hospitals too). Where on earth, don’t you see CCTV monitoring nowadays? It is everywhere but occasionally seen in the care environment. Think about who needs it most? Of course, you got it right, vulnerable people in our society. Fight for it, when your relatives get abused, until then it is not our problem. Shame on all of us!
Leadership – Abuse happens when the staff is not effectively trained and supervised. Leadership matters. What are we doing to monitor the quality of leaders in care? They need monitoring too, if not we will have yearly panorama disclosures.
Training – We are all very futuristic boasting about
Funding – Caring for vulnerable and health of people should always be the priority for a developed country like Briton. Having
#Missionoutstanding
Yes, Briton is light years away from delivering outstanding care. I have written a book with much passion for giving practical guidance to care homes on improving the quality in their care home. The people with passion have bought it and used it to strengthen their care home to deliver outstanding care for the vulnerable people of
We have built a system where ‘politics’ within the care is limiting our sector from improving. I hope, genuine people at the top realise it and brings in radical changes in care to prevent abuses happening in future. It is a shame to humanity. We are so proud about tech and internet progress we have made as humans, but question how much the quality of care?
Regardless, we will continue #missionoutstanding with, majority of the passionate and dedicated care professionals.
