“Horrific” treatment of children with learning disabilities must be ended, say MPs and peers

Treatment of young people with learning disabilities or autism in mental health hospitals is so bad that their human rights are being breached, claim MPs and peers.

A highly critical inquiry report by the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights published on 1 November condemned the “horrific reality” of the conditions under which many young people were detained in mental health hospitals.1

Evidence to the inquiry had been so “stark” and consistent that the committee said it had lost confidence that the system was doing what it claimed to and feared that the regulator the Care Quality Commission …