Review of Winterbourne View by Teresa Curtis

A review of the Winterbourne View Panorama

I watched this documentary this morning with my class on the goings on at Winterbourne View Residential Hospital for adults with Learning Disabilities. I watched as a member of staff made complaints and went to the top to report what was going on in the home and was not taking seriously and ignored and nothing done about his complaints not even an investigation and ended up having to go to the BBC Panorama team. I am ashamed at the fact that the staff member, a senior male nurse called Terry Bryan had to go to people not in the health care industry to talk about what was happening and becoming a whistle-blower in order to help the patients as much as he could.
I heard as the narrator stated that there was several different staff reporting abuse and still no investigation done to check for abuse. I heard the horror in the whistle blower Terry Bryan’s words as he told us what he experienced. I was disgusted as I watched carers poke a females eyes and hit her bare back after she had been restrained causing her to scream in pain. I saw the carers automatically restrain the patients, even when they had done nothing wrong and there was no need for restraint to be used. The fact they restrained them when not needed was bad, but the fact that they also used incorrect and dangerous ways of restraint shows me that they had either not been trained properly or disregarded any training they had and could end up killing the patient. In one episode of restraint that was included clearly showed a carer, leaning on the patient’s chest, with her other arm pushing on the neck above the carotid artery, which could cause serious damage or death.
I watched clips of different carers abusing the patients, such as one carer kicked the back of a patient’s leg whilst pulling their jumper until the fell to the floor. Another carer stood on a patient’s hand, a third carer restrain someone using a chair and even worse another carer repeatedly