Disabled dumped in old people's homes

Matthew Cook refused a place in an OAP home

A two year inquiry into disability in the UK carried out by the charity John Grooms has found that we have little idea how many disabled people there are in this country.

As BBC health correspondent Chris Hogg reports, that makes it harder to plan services for them, leading to gaps in provision.

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Matthew Cook needs his mother's help for the simplest tasks like getting into bed.

He is profoundly disabled, following a brain haemorrage at the age of 23.

What's happening at the moment makes no sense at all

Jane Ackroyd

Everyday life is a struggle both for him and for his mother Geraldine. But she puts up with it.

She dislikes the alternative they've been offered. Putting Matthew in a home with old age pensioners - something she nor Matthew wants to happen.

"Matthew has lived a fantastic life up until 23 - but he still has a lot to offer and a lot to get from life.

"But instead I have to see him sat in a wheelchair watching the telly in what would be an old peoples' home.

"I want Matthew to be able to have a lot more than that."

Matthew agrees.

"Going to an old people's home is as if you're there to vegetate and to become old.

"I want to get fit again and get back to life, to work and everything."

Inappropriate care

A report published by the charity John Grooms at Westminster on Tuesday suggests that thousands of other young disabled people are left to vegetate in old people's homes.

It estimates that more than a third of those who need residential care are living in homes designed primarily for other types of clients.

But Jeff Jerome, director of social services in the London Borough of Richmond, is sceptical about the findings.

"I don't imagine that any social services director or any social services member of staff would be comfortable with the situation where somebody was placed inappropriately in an older person's home when in fact they were a younger person with different needs."

In fact, he doesn't accept that there is such a problem. There isn't any hard evidence, he says.

This, of course, is true - it is just an educated guess by experts in the field.

Why? Because the government chooses not to collect this kind of data - a failing acknowledged by Mr Jerome.

"We don't know the numbers of people with disabilities.

"Part of that problem is that the Department of Health doesn't require information to be collected in a way that's helpful and usable."

But the more you know about the needs of young disabled people, the greater the pressure to meet them.

Long term savings

A cynic might suggest that one reason more detailed information isn't collected is because places at well equipped modern homes are more expensive than most councils can afford.

But Jane Ackroyd, who wrote the report, believes the extra costs of rehabilitation, occupational therapy and other services for young disabled people can provide savings in the long term.

"What's happening at the moment makes no sense at all.

"We're spending no money but over the long term we're spending a lot more on these people because at the end of the day, they can do very little for themselves and they have a normal life expectancy they will live as long as you and I."

The government can point to a string of initiatives which try to make the system more flexible, like direct grants to disabled people to try to allow them to arrange their own care.

The bottom line for the campaigners, however, is that while supermarkets, for example, put a lot of effort into what finding out exactly what their customers want, many of those who provide services for disabled people still operate on the principle, this is what's available, take it or leave it.