Ruth @Ruth2729

From our Facebook page by Casey Burnett Joseph’s Story – Part 1 This is incredibly hard to write, but I’m desperate to get my son Joseph’s story heard. Please share. Joseph is my world. He has autism, learning disabilities, OCD and mental health difficulties. I have fought for him all his life. Until he was almost 18, Joseph lived happily at home with me. Then COVID changed everything. His world became frighteningly small. Soon afterwards I was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and Joseph lost his beloved dog of 13 years. Suddenly, he was surrounded by fear, illness and loss. When I became critically ill, I was admitted to hospital as an emergency. My mum couldn’t care for Joseph alone, so he was taken away from home, terrified he would never see me again. Eventually he moved into supported living. As I recovered, he came home at weekends, but professionals insisted he needed to stay there to build independence. Instead, everything fell apart. Over the next 18 months his placement deteriorated. Joseph’s mental health declined, but no one listened. The system believed it knew best. During one crisis, Joseph was restrained by police for nearly nine hours in Scarborough A&E while in extreme distress. It was the hottest day of the year. He suffered burns, multiple injuries, kidney damage and almost ended up in intensive care. I begged for the restraint to end. No one listened. He spent six days in hospital. Sitting beside him, I couldn’t understand how anyone could treat such a vulnerable young man this way. Joseph has the mental age of a child. The terror he experienced is unimaginable. Part 2 in comments

Joseph’s Story – Part 2 Just over a month after leaving hospital, Joseph was detained under the Mental Health Act and taken to a hospital in Birmingham, nearly 200 miles from home. I had to beg, borrow and scrape together the money just to spend a couple of hours each week with my son. Every visit he begged me to take him home. Eventually, he was transferred to a hospital near Middlesbrough. We were so relieved that he would finally be closer to family. He arrived just before Christmas. We were told he would be able to come home on Christmas Day. Then, at the last minute, that was taken away. Instead, we spent Christmas Day with him on the ward. Later he was promised home visits. I decorated the house with balloons and banners because I was so excited. On the very morning he was due to come home, the visit was cancelled. Joseph was devastated. So were we. Now we are fighting to bring him home. Both the Birmingham hospital and his current treating team have recommended that Joseph can only recover in a family environment. They believe the current setting is not the right place for him. Yet the Integrated Care Board ICB and Local Authority continue to put barriers in the way. Yesterday I accompanied Joseph to James Cook Hospital to see a plastic surgeon because he now needs a skin graft to his head. His distress and anxiety have become so overwhelming that he has seriously injured himself. Now I’ve been told they want to send him back to Birmingham. The people making these life-changing decisions have never even met Joseph. They are ignoring the recommendations of the clinicians who know him best and the family who love him. My son is slowly dying in institutions that are supposed to help him. Please share Joseph’s story. We need people to know what is happening. The photographs show Joseph before all of this, and while he has been in hospital. I am heartbroken. 💔

This is important — but it also raises a bigger patient-safety question. How many people taking antidepressants, mood stabilisers or antipsychotics are clearly informed that these medicines may affect heat tolerance, hydration, sweating, sodium levels, blood pressure, cognition, falls and physical safety during extreme weather? Patients should not learn about these risks only during a heat warning. This belongs in informed consent, medication review, pharmacy advice and routine safety monitoring — especially for older people, people on polypharmacy, and those living alone. What other adverse effects are still under-discussed, under-monitored, or dismissed as “mental illness” rather than possible medication harm? #PatientRights #InformedConsent #MedicalEthics #PatientSafety #DoNoHarm #WomenInMedicine

Where’s the justice for people with learning disabilities neglected in care? I’ve spent 18 months investigating. No providers prosecuted, even after a person died I interviewed the CQC, with powers to prosecute but rarely does. 11 since 2016 relating to learning disability care

“He said that he wanted all seclusion rooms turned into broom cupboards.” Read what happened when Jack Cavanagh met the Welsh Government. 👇 rightfullives.org.uk/blog/jack-cava…

Nurse exposed by undercover BBC Panorama reporter struck off - BBC News - Edenfield share.google/glK5Zo79hZ8BmL…

‘I’ve become increasingly alarmed that learning disability healthcare is disappearing in NHS plans. The first warning signs were when the NHS 10 year plan came out last year.   Learning disability got just one mention. Page 36, if you’re interested’ #socialmurder

Steve Hardy🏳️‍🌈 @SteveHardyLDN

a week ago

Written off and written out: why we need to put learning disability healthcare back into the new NHS - @SeeAbility seeability.org/news/written-a…

3 9 21 960 1

Loads of professionals are arguing Open Dialogue vs Neighbourhood Mental Health Centres right now when every survivor-activist I know is ‘just’ arguing for basic human rights.

Thinking of Zoe today and this week. Zoe was a young autistic woman severely damaged by the label of EUPD as she, her mam Jean, and everyone who knew her told mental health services. She was severely let down and we fight on in Zoe and so many other’s name. #AutismNotPD 🦄🐹🩰💔

Dr Jay Watts @Shrink_at_Large

2 years ago

TW suicide Pls read Jean's important testimony on #AutismNotPD after the death of her daughter: "Eventually, Zoe developed complex PTSD because of her experiences with mental health services and felt the only way to escape the EUPD diagnosis was to die". tinyurl.com/2d6v5x9f

21 124 267 41K 61

Not surprised.. but bloody anger in every part of my body. Sorry won't cut it. Full individual and organisational accountability required. bbc.co.uk/news/live/c4gv…

Patients "zombified" through overuse of medication as restraint & seclusion misused as a punishment for so-called bad behaviour. Ultimately, it was CCTV footage, and not oversight, that proved essential to exposing the scale of harm... news.sky.com/story/vulnerab…

For those like myself.. working as a clinical psychologist during this dark era of mass prescribing psychiatric drugs… its impossible to discern if a persons struggles are related to any episode/pathology vs the effects of the drugs they are prescribed. I am proud that I, at the very least, inform them of that. Others keep providing diagnosis after diagnosis- leading to higher doses and new prescriptions. All the time believing its their “mental illness”

Thinking back to the NHS Long Term Plan of 2019. In the section about autism and learning disabilities, it promised: “Increased investment in intensive, crisis and forensic community support will also enable more people to receive personalised care in the community, closer to home, and reduce preventable admissions to inpatient services. Every local health system will be expected to use some of this growing community health services investment to have a seven-day specialist multidisciplinary service and crisis care.” So how’s that going?

Rightful Lives @RightfulLives

3 weeks ago

At the recent Mencap #HomesNotHospitals event, @PreetKGillMP said this about reforms to community care for autistic people and people with learning disabilities: “We’ve estimated that full implementation will take around 10 years due to the time needed to expand specialist

3 9 14 2K 1

Or...more of the same and an entry to secure services.

Keir Harding @Keirwales

3 weeks ago

@RITB_ @kilnerevonnet @jadethebpdcoach @ZacharyGrinDPT Or…treating with a 10p mix up of every type of psychotropic medication - then deciding someone is untreatable and stopping it all dead. No titration. No help with withdrawal. Feels and looks very punishing

1 1 6 336 0

Absolutely. When services are measured by bed occupancy and length of stay rather than whether the person is actually recovering, the whole system becomes dangerously distorted. In my daughter’s case, medication was not treated as something requiring careful monitoring, consent, review and accountability. It became something done to her. She suffered degrading treatment in two hospitals and two care homes, including serious concerns about medication management, deterioration, neglect, and the family being shut out when we raised alarm bells. The most frightening part is that there are almost no effective protection mechanisms. Families complain, escalate, document, beg for review, and the complaints system simply absorbs it, delays it, deflects it, or sends people in circles between the NHS, local authority, CQC, safeguarding and Ombudsman. That is how abuse continues. Not because families are silent, but because accountability is missing. Until services are measured by real outcomes, whether people are safer, better, heard, protected, and treated with dignity, the system will keep rewarding discharge targets and paperwork while vulnerable patients pay the price.

Clive remained invisible in life and in Death yet here we are marking 15 years of #Winterbourne15 with every deliberate abject failure since, yet not a single statement acknowledgment of the #TransformingcareDeaths #CliveTreacey #TheirLifesMatterd 🌹 #HumanRightsFaluires

TODAY IT IS 15 YEARS SINCE WINTERBOURNE VIEW: WHY ARE THE NUMBERS STILL RISING? Today, May 31st, we mark the 15th anniversary of the Winterbourne View scandal. At the time, the world promised "never again." Yet, as someone who survived three years of detention in similar settings, Rightful Lives admin, Alexis Quinn, is here to tell you that for many, "never again" was a hollow promise. The data from 2026 is staggering: 🚨 A 152% increase in the detention of autistic people since 2015. 🚨 A "Stuck" Population: Those with learning disabilities are still being detained for 10, 15, or 20 years. 🚨 Ongoing Abuse: From Edenfield to St Andrew's and the horrors exposed in the Patient 11 podcast, the culture of locked wards remains broken. The Legislative Stalling Point: While the new Mental Health Act has received Royal Assent, the Government is hiding behind a "switch on" clause. They refuse to enact these life-saving changes until "sufficient" community support is in place—yet they have provided no roadmap, no funding, and no definition of what "sufficient" actually looks like. The Risk of Inaction: Without a community roadmap, we aren't "transforming care"; we are just shifting the trauma. We are seeing a rise in "trans-institutionalisation," where autistic people are pushed into forensic pathways, the criminal justice system, or left homeless in unregulated, restrictive settings. It is too much to ask for a home, not a hospital? At Rightful Lives, we are demanding an urgent, funded roadmap for community support. No more "learning lessons." We need action. Watch our video to hear why we cannot wait any longer. #Winterbourne15 #RightfulLives #MentalHealthReform #AutismAdvocacy #HomesNotHospitals #Patient11 #HumanRights

COUNTDOWN TO WINTERBOURNE DAY 4: ⏳THE LEGISLATIVE HOSTAGE It's been six months since the Mental Health Act received Royal Ascent. So why is nothing changing? 🏛️ The Government is hiding behind a "switch on" clause. They refuse to enact the reforms until community support is "sufficient," but they haven't funded a roadmap to get us there. It's an empty promise designed to buy them time while we lose ours. 🕒 This is an inadequate response to a 15-year-old crisis... and let sbe honest... its decades longer than this!. We don't need more legislative excuses; we need a funded, transparent roadmap. 🗺️💳 #MHA #LegislativeReform #MentalHealthAct2026 #Winterbourne15 #NothingHasChanged

Coverage of the Winterbourne View anniversary in @PrivateEyeNews. Social murder indeedy.

COUNTDOWN TO WINTERBOURNE DAY 3: ⛓️THE "STUCK" POPULATION If you have a learning disability in the UK today, you are statistically more likely to be part of the "stuck" population—detained for 10, 15, or even 20 years. ⏳ 15 years after Winterbourne, people are still serving life sentences in locked wards for the "crime" of being neurodivergent. The Government's Mental Health Act plans are inadequate because they offer no exit strategy for those left to rot. 🏚️ In the lead-up to May 31st, Rightful Lives is demanding an end to these institutional life sentences. Our lives are not for sale. 🚫💰 #StuckPopulation #RightfulLives #LongTermDetention #RightsNow #NothingHasChanged