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SOCIAL SERVICE CRIMES AND ABUSE is a new category of crime unique to identifying the common characteristics and methodologies that might be practiced by social service workers against a person or persons for the procurement of profit through questionable means.
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SSEC – SOCIAL SERVICE ECONOMIC CRIMES (research)
social service crimes research

(The following article from “The Guardian, Tuesday 7 August 2012)
WINTERBOURNE VIEW ABUSE: LAST STAFF MEMBER PLEADS GUILTY

Michael Ezenagu and 10 other former care home staff to be sentenced for abusing patients with learning disabilities. The last member of staff at a private care home caught on camera by a BBC investigation abusing patients has pleaded guilty. Michael Ezenagu, 29, admitted two charges of ill-treating a patient at the Winterbourne View private hospital in Hambrook, south Gloucestershire.

The care home was exposed by Panorama last year when an undercover reporter recorded footage for Panorama of patients being abused by their carers. The covert video appeared to show vulnerable residents being pinned down, slapped, doused in water and taunted.

Ten other former employees of Winterbourne View — Wayne Rogers, Graham Doyle, Allison Dove, Jason Gardiner, Charlotte Cotterell, Holly Draper, Kelvin Fore, Sookalingun Appoo, Danny Brake, and Neil Ferguson — have already pleaded guilty to a total of 36 charges of ill treatment under the Mental Health Act, bringing the total number of charges to 38.

The staff will all now be sentenced at Bristol crown court, although the recorder of Bristol, Judge Neil Ford QC, is not expected to make his decision public for another month. The number of people involved means itwill would take a week to sentence them all.

Ford told Ezenagu, who was the only defendant in court for Monday’s hearing: “Your case will be adjourned for sentence and your sentence and the sentence of your co-accused will take place together. I am told that the sentencing hearing will take as long as a week and there will be some delay in finding a date.”

After the hearing Ann Reddrop, head of the Crown Prosecution Service’s south-west complex case unit, said prosecutors would ask Ford “to take into account the fact that these are disability hate crimes when determining the sentence … As such he is able to impose an uplift in sentence to reflect the seriousness of this type of crime”.

“This prosecution sends out a clear message that care staff who abuse vulnerable people will be charged and brought before the courts. There is a responsibility on all of us to report such behaviour so that firm action can be taken to protect people and, when the evidence is there, to prosecute those responsible.”

The CQC’s unannounced inspection programme of 145 hospitals and care homes for people with learning disabilities, prompted by the BBC’s investigation, revealed that half the services failed to meet essential care and safeguarding standards.

Meanwhile, charities warned that families continue to report widespread abuse in the care system for people with a learning difficulty. In a report released on Tuesday Mencap and the Challenging Behaviour Foundation, say there is a real risk of “another Winterbourne View” unless the government takes strong action to stop vulnerable people being sent to large institutions, often hundreds of miles from home.

Although specialist units are developed to provide short-stay specialist treatment plans for people with a learning disability who have experienced a crisis, experts say that in reality they are “dumping grounds”, with more than half of patients remaining for two or more years, and nearly a third remaining for more than five years.

The joint report, Out of Sight, details a number of serious incidences reported by families since the Winterbourne View scandal, including physical assault, sexual abuse and the overuse of restraint — both physical and medical, such as overuse of medication.

The charities had received 260 reports from families concerning the abuse and neglect of people with a learning disability in institutional care since the Winterbourne View scandal was uncovered in June 2011.

Mark Goldring, the chief executive of Mencap, says: “We fear that unless the government commits to a strong action plan to close large institutions and develop appropriate local services for people with a learning disability, there is a very real risk that another Winterbourne View will come to light.”

Vivien Cooper, founder of the Challenging Behaviour Foundation, said: “Many hundreds of people with a learning disability are being sent away to care institutions hundreds of miles from home, where they remain for years unnecessarily, at risk of neglect and abuse. Our report details the deep concerns that families have for their safety and welfare.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/aug/06/winterbourne-view-abuse-staff-guilty