Profoundly Upset by Panorama Programme last night.

My brother contracted TB Meningitis at age 2 some 42 years ago, leaving him with severely limited mental capacity and no speech. So from the age of 5 he has been in various types of residential care.

Unfortunately throughout his life we have come across abuse like this and have been powerless to stop it often finding out at a very late stage that he was being abused. So late in fact that his sunny go lucky personality had been altered, he started banging his head in frustration, pulling hair etc. He has been tied to a chair to stop him from running around, given medical coshes.

At the moment he seems to be happy and well adjusted, but the lack of suitable facilities because of recurrent government cut backs means that he lives nearly 100 miles away from his family, who would love to interact with him more and include him as much as possible. The whole system is cruel not just the caring aspect.

I of course like many watching last night was profoundly upset watching the programme and do hope that justice will be seen to be done. I suspect they will get not much more than a slap on the wrists though. I do hope I never catch anyone abusing my kin.

The regulator of these services needs to take a long hard look at its self but they wont they are so arrogant, as shown by the spokes person that would not admit that their inspection systems are totally flawed. It is the same with NHS hospital inspections, everyone cleans up their act during the inspections. There needs to be more sneaky inspections to catch the sneaky behaviour.

One suggestion I have for the CEO of Castlebeck that one of my family who runs a day care centre in the USA employed as a deterrent / reassurance measure is the installation of web cameras that relatives subscribe to online so that they can check on their children at any time during the day. Not a total solution as there will always be blind spots and areas where cameras can not be put ie bathrooms, but it is a good start to reassure his clients that they will not be abused and that they take the matter seriously enough to do something about it.

Lastly I think one of the root causes of this is the type of people who are coming in paid caring, as a minimum wage job, not vocation.