The Winterbourne View hospital abuse occurred at Winterbourne View, a private hospital, owned and operated by Castlebeck. Local social services and the Care Quality Commission had received various warnings but the mistreatment continued.
One senior nurse reported his concerns to the management at Winterbourne View and to CQC, but his complaint was not taken up.The public funded hospital has been shut down as a result of the abuse that took place. The undercover footage aired in BBC Panorama presented staff continuously abusing patients in various occasions and with different methods (restraining under chair, cold showers, poured mouthwash into patient`s eyes, pulling hair, leaving patients shaking, depressed, unable to speak for themselves).One of the victims, Simon Tovey, was seen being repeatedly assaulted and mentally abused by the care workers.
The CQC did a nationwide check on facilities owned by the same company, Castlebeck Care – as a result three more institutions have been closed. The CQC reported a "systemic failure to protect people or to investigate allegations of abuse" and said that Castlebeck Care had "misled" the health watchdog.The CQC also inspected 132 similar institutions and a Serious Case Review was commissioned – some of the roughly ten local and national enquiries were carried out to examine what went wrong. Eleven people plead guilty to criminal offences of neglect or abuse as a result of evidence from Undercover Care and six of them were jailed. Immediately after the eleventh person pleaded guilty, the Serious Case Review was published, revealing hundreds of previous incidents at the hospital and missed warnings.
