Winterbourne View: Laws, Policies, and Ethics in Health and Social Care

Students Name: Bayryam Ramadan Yuzer
P1099491

Contents
Introduction
Summary of legislation and policies
 Summary of key legislations, national and organisational
policies, statutory guidance and codes of practice
 Laws and policies not adhered to
 Shortfalls in patient’s safety and care
 Outcomes of not following the laws and policies
 Ways in which winterbourne could have complied
 Impact of equality and equity when safeguarding
 Relationship between law, policy and ethics
 National and organisational policies compared against national
professional standards in Health and Social Care
Conclusion
References
Audience: Students, Teachers, Assessors

Introduction
The BBC Panorama programme, which aired in 2011, highlighted serious
maltreatment and shocking level of care at Winterbourne View, a private
health Centre which has been created back in 2006 in South Gloucestershire.
The Hospital was owned by Castlebeck Limited which runs 150 health care
centers across UK. The hospital was built for people with autism and learning
disabilities, who were difficult to handle and whose behavior concerned their
family members and professionals. The facility was supposed to assess its
patients and provide the necessary care, treatments and rehabilitation
services (National Academies of Sciences et al. 2019). The place was
designed to provide treatment of 24 people in total and Winterbourne was
receiving about £3500 a week per person, from the NHS. Given the
astronomical funding, everyone is expected to receive a great level of
service. However, the exact opposite happened at this care home, and as
reports suggested, high level of abuse took place. The TV programme
exposed how abusive the hospital staffs were towards their patients - many
videos of the staffs slapping, hurting, bullying and executing other torturous
behavior towards the patients surfaced, facilitating the South
Gloucestershire Safeguarding Adults Board to review the situation. The police
opened several investigations which resulted in 11 criminal convictions. This
resulted in expediting the closing of the hospital in June of 2011 (Rickman
2012).
I will summarise the key legislation, national policies and organisational
policies, statutory guidance and codes of practice that should have been in
place at Winterbourne. It describes the laws and policies which have not
been followed and explain also the shortfalls in patient’s safety and care as
this relates to law, ethics and policy. The outcome will be explained and how
they could have been compliant with will be critically reviewed. The report
will analyse the impact that different equality legislation and equity has
when safeguarding individuals.