A disabled peer has used a debate celebrating International Women\u2019s Day to highlight how a disabled woman was placed in a nursing home against her will after treatment for pneumonia, rather than being returned to her own home.<\/p>\n
Baroness [Jane] Campbell told fellow peers on Friday<\/a> (6 March) that Lucinda Ritchie had been left \u201cisolated and frightened\u201d by her treatment, and that her experience demonstrated a wider \u201cbackward slide from independence to dependency and exclusion\u201d.<\/p>\n She said this showed how for \u201cevery socially included disabled woman we celebrate, there are hundreds of others whose independence is denied and potential ignored\u201d.<\/p>\n She described Ritchie (pictured) \u2013 who uses a powered wheelchair, breathes with a ventilator and communicates with eye-gaze technology \u2013 as \u201cacademically accomplished and nationally recognised<\/a> for her assistive technology advocacy\u201d.<\/p>\n For the last eight years, the 33-year-old has been living in an adapted bungalow in Billingshurst, West Sussex, with 24-hour care funded by NHS Continuing Healthcare<\/a>.<\/p>\n But following a hospital admission with pneumonia last April, as reported initially by the BBC<\/a>, the NHS commissioning board decided last month that it was \u201cin her best interests to place her in a nursing home miles from home\u201d, Baroness Campbell told peers.<\/p>\n She said: \u201cOverstretched staff, unfamiliar with her complex needs, switched off her power chair and could not work her eye-gaze technology.<\/p>\n \u201cA woman who had been thriving was now isolated and frightened.<\/p>\n \u201cLast week, she was apparently back in hospital because the care provided was not tailored to her needs.\u201d<\/p>\n She said this appeared to violate her right to independent living under article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities<\/a>.<\/p>\n Baroness Campbell told the International Women\u2019s Day debate: \u201cFor decades, personal budgets and empowerment models transformed disabled people\u2019s lives, enabling them to exercise genuine choice and control.<\/p>\n \u201cIndependent living is not theoretical; it is deliverable. Has that good practice gone?<\/p>\n \u201cWhy did we support disabled people to move out of institutions only to return them to them 30 years later?\u201d<\/p>\n She pointed out that the government minister responding to the debate was Baroness [Jacqui] Smith, who \u2013 when minister for social care \u2013 appointed her as chair of the Social Care Institute for Excellence in 2001.<\/p>\n She said Baroness Smith had taken \u201ca chance on a disabled woman who wanted to radically transform the way social care operated by empowering service users to be co-producers for community care\u201d, which was her \u201cfirst big career break\u201d.<\/p>\n And she asked the minister to meet her to \u201clook at ways to prevent this backward slide from independence to dependency and exclusion\u201d.<\/p>\n She added: \u201cDisabled women\u2019s rights to equality, dignity and freedom are not symbolic; they are vital and must be upheld, not just today but every day of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n Responding to the debate, Baroness Smith \u2013 who is now minister for women and equalities \u2013 did not comment on Baroness Campbell\u2019s request for a meeting, or on the case of Lucinda Ritchie.<\/p>\n But she said that Baroness Campbell had, as always, \u201cably represented disabled women and challenged us on their role\u201d, and she added: \u201cI do believe that my decision to make her chair of the Social Care Institute for Excellence was one of the better decisions I made as a minister.\u201d<\/p>\n The government had not said by noon today (Thursday) whether Baroness Smith would agree to a meeting with Baroness Campbell, or commented on whether the minister was concerned about the case.<\/p>\n Ritchie told Disability News Service yesterday in an email: \u201cI am really pleased that I was mentioned by Baroness Campbell in her speech.<\/p>\n \u201cPerhaps somebody will listen to me now and this will never happen to any other disabled person.<\/p>\n \u201cLaying here in hospital I have felt hopeless at times and that life was not worth living.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know why I was treated so badly, being taken against my will to a nursing home \u2013 I felt powerless as nobody listened to me.<\/p>\n \u201cI saw my life in my bungalow with friends, family and doing normal things like studying at university, going shopping, to church, much of what is taken for granted being taken away.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt utterly worthless being wheeled into that ambulance against my will.\u201d<\/p>\n A spokesperson for NHS Sussex Integrated Care Board (ICB) said the nursing home she had been transferred to from hospital was a specialist care centre, and that no previous concerns had been raised about its care with the ICB.<\/p>\n Allison Cannon, chief nursing officer at NHS Sussex, said in a statement yesterday: \u201cOur absolute priority is to ensure that Lucinda is able to receive safe, high quality care that meets her health needs.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have worked with Lucinda for some time to provide NHS care to support her, and we actively worked with the health professionals in hospital, Lucinda, her family, and her representatives to consider how she could be safely supported to leave hospital.<\/p>\n \u201cInitially, after a prolonged stay in [an] intensive care unit and clinical assessment, it was not clinically safe for Lucinda to go home straight away, but we are meeting with all partners every week to work to support a safe discharge to her home.\u201d<\/p>\n Baroness Campbell told her fellow peers during the debate that \u201cmodern disabled women refuse to be defined by their medical condition\u201d and instead \u201cdefine themselves by determination, skill and leadership\u201d.<\/p>\n She said: \u201cThey are clear that their lives are not exceptional; they are the same as anyone else when barriers are removed.\u201d<\/p>\n She praised her fellow crossbench peer, the retired Paralympic athlete Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson<\/a>, who had \u201cradically transformed sporting expectations of elite performance\u201d.<\/p>\n And she highlighted the disabled actor and activist Liz Carr<\/a>, who has \u201cconfronted harmful narratives about the value placed on disabled lives\u201d; Rose Ayling-Ellis, the Deaf Strictly Come Dancing champion<\/a>, whose subsequent campaigning has shown that \u201cwhen communication barriers fall, everyone benefits\u201d; and Katie Piper<\/a>, who survived a life-changing acid attack and now \u201cchallenges society\u2019s fixation on appearance\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A disabled peer has used a debate celebrating International Women\u2019s Day to highlight how a disabled woman was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-473367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}