Just one in five NHS and privately-run hospitals and care homes for people with learning disabilities meet national standards, according to a series of unannounced inspections.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has published its latest batch of reports on whether people get safe and appropriate treatment and care, and if they are protected from abuse.

The results showed just four out of 20 providers met essential standards for both care and welfare and safeguarding. Of 67 reports published so far (including the latest 20), just 17 providers were compliant with both standards.

The CQC said it had issued a formal warning over Walkern Lodge, a hospital for up to six women in Stevenage run by the private firm Cambian Learning Disabilities Limited. Inspectors said they had “major concerns” regarding safeguarding at the hospital.

They also expressed major concerns over safeguarding at another hospital, Bloomfield Court, and 5, 6 Ivy Mews in London, run by private firm Curo Care Limited.

At Walkern Lodge, inspectors found staff saying they regularly restrained people with learning disabilities but proper logs were not kept and managers denied this even happened. Two staff were suspended during the investigation.

Inspectors also found incidents had occurred relating to “missing money, a disclosure of alleged abuse, a potential incident of physical abuse and two separate incidents of serious self harm, that had not been reported to the Hertfordshire safeguarding team or to us, the Commission”.

The CQC said it had since been back to inspect Walkern Lodge and was satisfied that “necessary improvements” had been made.

A joint statement from Mencap and the Challenging Behaviour Foundation said lessons must be learned:”These latest CQC reports again reveal serious concerns about the care people with a learning disability are receiving in specialist assessment units, and it is extremely worrying that 16 of the latest 20 units inspected by the CQC are not fully compliant with essential quality and safety standards.”

Care services minister Paul Burstow said: “People with learning disabilities deserve individualised care, and these inspections are rooting out unacceptable practice. Where concerns are raised, both the NHS and local authorities have already begun to take action. Providers must provide good care, but commissioners must design and buy the right services in the first place.”

The father of a Sheffield woman left paralysed in a car crash has talked of his “huge relief” after a successful legal fight to get her lifelong care.

Rosie Mayes, 22, was left tetraplegic when the car, driven by her then-boyfriend, overturned and hit a bank.

Ms Mayes was in hospital for 10 months after the crash, in December 2009, in Dronfield, Derbyshire.

The legal action was prompted when the driver’s insurance firm contested liability over the crash.

At a hearing at the High Court in Leeds on Friday, Ms Mayes was granted a further interim payment of damages to allow her care to continue.

Her legal team said a settlement was in the process of being put together to fund the support she needs.

‘Dreadful and avoidable’

Ms Mayes, who had to be cut free from the wreckage of the car by firefighters, spent 12 days in intensive care.

She is now confined to a wheelchair and requires 24-hour care.

Andy Wynne, her father, said: “Nothing can ever bring back the life that Rosie had before this dreadful and avoidable accident.

“The decision by the insurance company to contest liability was really a body blow for all of us, and on top of everything Rosie has had to go through, to add the uncertainty and the stress this has caused really was outrageous.”

At the time of the crash, Ms Mayes was studying for a degree in history at York University.

She said: “It’s affected my life, and my family and friend’s lives as well.

“As far as the future’s concerned, I’m not sure what career I want to do, but since I’ve had this injury, there’s a lot of things I feel like I want to change.”

She has now resumed her studies at Sheffield University.

When I thought about what I would be posting on my first full day back blogging, I wasn’t expecting to have to cover quite such a big load of scribble from the Sun quite so soon. Yuck. Just yuck.

I must thank the amazing Nicky Clark for the info, and take this opportunity to tell her that I sincerely agree with the very good points she is making here.

Personally, I have been very much physically disabled- and very much entitled to DLA- for life. School trips to Chessington World of Adventures were the highlight of several academic years, and guess what, world? Rollercoasters and banana boats were the highlights of those school trips!

A charity that helps people with disabilities to enjoy horse riding has been targeted by thieves in Dorset.

Three £400 saddles were stolen from the Riding for the Disabled Association stables on Ringwood Road, Ferndown on Tuesday night.

Police said the theft of the specially-adapted saddles will have a “detrimental impact” on the charity’s programme.

They appealed for horse owners to check the security of their equipment.

This is crazy.

A Greater Manchester charity that transports people with disabilities has been left “sickened” and “let down” after thieves stole its minibus.

The white 10-seater bus, owned by Trafford Wheelers, was taken from outside a house in Derbyshire Lane, Stretford, between 02:00 and 07:00 GMT.

Police said it has logos on it and is easily identifiable.

Charity manager Helen Hines said: “I am just so sickened someone would take it. It is obviously for disabled people.”

The Citroen minibus, which has rear wheelchair access, was bought by the charity using grants and fundraising.

‘Let people down’

“We call it a minibus, but it is basically an ambulance. We used it to transport people who cannot get around by themselves,” Miss Hines continued.

“We have already had to let people down today, who have now had to stay at home. Their families have had to arrange care or stay off work to look after them.”

Trafford Wheelers is a cycling-based charity that transports people with disabilities to various parks, trails and venues so they can ride.

Police have asked anyone with information to contact them.

In November, Sheffield University student Lauren Platts bought a cheap bottle of what she thought was vodka, for £5.99.

She says the man in the off-licence jokingly said ‘It will blind you’. Miss Platts said she laughed at the time but now she thinks he was not far wrong.

After drinking about a third of a bottle mixed with lemonade she spent the next two days unable to get out of bed.

After speaking to Trading Standards officers, she now knows it was not vodka at all.

“I had the worst migraine ever, I was extremely sick, with blurred vision. On the second day I wondered whether I’d ever get better.”

Two months on and the 21-year-old from Chesterfield in Derbyshire still has blurred vision and regularly loses peripheral vision.

“I’ve been sent home from work because of the vision problems. It’s really scary. I think I might have it for good, but I’m just grateful to be alive or not completely blind,” she said.

Miss Platts now knows what she drank was industrial alcohol.

Often methylated spirit is mixed with bleach to change the colour of the alcohol, so it resembles vodka.

Other chemicals like isopropanol, used in cleaning fluids, and chloroform, used in pesticides, have also been found in bogus brands.

Police and Trading Standards say the illegal industry is becoming more sophisticated.

In Boston, Lincolnshire, in July, five men died in an explosion at an industrial unit. Police later confirmed they had found a filtration plant for making fake vodka within the small building.

Miss Platts’ symptoms are classic signs of someone who has consumed methanol and other chemicals, often used by illegal brewers.

She is among a growing number of vodka drinkers, especially students, who are seeking out cheap brands. Universities in Sheffield and Leeds reported a spike in counterfeit alcohol in student areas in November.

The student welfare officer at Sheffield University, Matt Denton, said they had posted warnings on their website.

Students have described feeling extremely ill after drinking what they thought was cheap vodka, and some have suffered memory loss.

Trading Standards teams across the country say they are seizing illegal alcohol every week.

A consultant at Lincoln County Hospital, Vikas Sodiwala, said patients were turning up at casualty departments showing similar symptoms to Miss Platts – dizziness, nausea, stomach pains, vomiting and blurred vision.

He said they had bought it at off-licences, drank it at a party, or even got it from car boot sales.

“Methanol can attack the optic nerve at the back of the eye. This is what can affect a person’s vision and in some cases make them blind,” he said.

“I’m hearing this is now a nationwide problem and other colleagues in the East Midlands are reporting an increase in patients who don’t realise they’ve consumed industrial alcohol not vodka.”

A spirits industry expert has warned the bootleg factories where the fake vodka is made are a disaster in the making.

Ed Binsted, president of the British Bottlers Institute, said: “These places are like timebombs. Look at what happened in Boston with the five men who died in the unit there where fake vodka was found.

“These places are popping up all over the country. The industry needs to be one step ahead of the bootleggers – they’re getting better at forging the bottles and labels. But the contents are lethal.”

Miss Platts’ story is featured on BBC Inside out in the East Midlands, at 19:30 GMT on Monday.

This is one of those rare times when I break my own comments policy and swear. In all seriousness- what the Hell?

(Thanks to Sunny Hundal).

I’ve never heard of him, but it seems he’s another scribbler of rubbish.

Rod Liddle has just incurred the wrath of the disability lobby by having a go in his Sun column at “pretend disabled” people. Included in this category, Rod decided, were people with fibromyalgia and ME. Lots of people queued up Twitter to say how horrid they thought he was, wishing he would succumb to some kind of disability himself, etc.

I suppose, having recently suffered from an ME-like illness I should be one of them. But unlike Rod’s Twitter critics I took the trouble to read the full article and I think Rod’s point is well made. There really are far, far too many people sponging off the taxpayer right now with their fake or exaggerated disabilities and they’re one of the reasons we’re in the financial mess we’re in.

One of.

Disability; anti-racism; diversity; anti-homophobia; anti sex-discrimination; etc: every one of these has its specialist lobby group which considers it its bounden duty to screw the economy for as much as it possibly can. Sometimes it does so directly, through entirely unnecessary government offshoots like the Equality and Human Rights Commission; sometimes it does so indirectly, via all the various forms of swingeing anti-discrimination legislation and regulation and inconvenience imposed on private business.

And amazingly the government actually pays these lobbyists to grumble and campaign for even more stringent, costly legislation and regulation. A report last year from the Taxpayers’ Alliance showed that in 2007/8 over £37 million of our money was spent on our behalf, so that hard-left organisations like Friends Of The Earth and the New Economics Foundation can campaign for more encroachment in our lives by the overweening state.

This isn’t going to last. It cannot last. Future historians are going to look back in astonishment at the lunacy of an age when, according to one government definition from the New Labour era, fully 11 million people – that’s a quarter of the adult population – qualified as disabled. Where does the money come from?

Three places: taxation; inflationary money-printing; borrowing.

Every time the disability lobby squeals for more another few jobs are lost, another few basis points are lost from GDP growth. But these people don’t care; they know better than that: the government owns a magic money tree and its ability to distribute the fruits thereof is boundless.

Remember Rod Liddle, readers? I didn’t- well not until about half an hour ago, anyway. That was, until I found out that he scribbled this load of rubbish for the Sun today. (The second  link will take you to a ‘freezepage’ with many thanks to the brilliant @latentexistence- for some reason between 11.41am and now, the online version of the piece seems to have disappeared. However the lovely people at Political Scrapbook have got a picture of the page as it appears in the printed paper.)

The text:

MY New Year’s resolution for 2012 was to become disabled.

Nothing too serious, maybe just a bit of a bad back or one of those newly invented illnesses which make you a bit peaky for decades — fibromyalgia, or M.E.

There’s lots of money to be made from being disabled — your money, taxpayers’ money, as it happens.

And it is far easier to be disabled these days than was ever the case.

Also, I am nothing if not a creature of fashion, a cool and with-it hipster, daddy-o, who is always up to date with the latest trends.

And being disabled is incredibly fashionable. The number of people who claim to be disabled has doubled in the past ten years.

And who can blame them? Not only do you get money from the Government and don’t have to go to work — but if you play your cards right you might get one of those badges which lets you park wherever you want.

Right in front of the cashpoint, for example. And you can use those enormous toilets with levers and handgrips and emergency buzzers they have in all public places, without feeling too guilty about it.

The latest figures regarding incapacity allowance came out this week. It is now estimated that 80 per cent of people who are claiming sickness benefit are actually fit to work. What’s more, almost a million people have been on Invalidity Benefit for more than a decade.

When you suggest that this is a public scandal, the disabled charities get very cross and accuse you of victimising the infirm.

But I’m not, I’m victimising the people who are pretending to be infirm in order to claim money from the state.

Or at least, I’m trying to: I don’t suppose it will have much effect. Just water off their supposedly bad backs.

Then the Left-wingers will say — hang on a minute, you fat old fascist, more money is lost to the country as a result of tax avoidance by the very rich than is wasted through sickness benefits.

Well, maybe it is. And the Government should deal with that with a bit more vigour than they do right now.

But it still doesn’t make fraudulently claiming sickness benefit OK, does it?

That’s like saying we shouldn’t get worked up about crimes such as rape because murder is far worse.

It’s a silly argument.

More than anything, though, the people fraudulently claiming sickness benefit are doing a disservice to those who really deserve it: The people who are truly disabled or ill. It has become easier to claim these benefits, partly as a consequence of the disablement charities who, out of their own self-interest, insist that an ever-greater proportion of the population is disabled.

I think we should all pretend to be disabled for a month or so, claim benefits and hope this persuades the authorities to sort out the mess.

Disabled bloggers and Tweeters  are getting their own back on him and having the last laugh. They are far stronger than me- I feel like screaming, then crying, but I know that won’t help which is why I have simply linked them instead.

Two men who attacked a disabled man are being sought by police in Cumbria.

The 55-year-old victim was riding his mobility scooter in the Longtown area of Carlisle on Sunday evening when the pair stopped him by blocking his path.

One of them is believed to have said “go on, hit him” and he was punched in the chest and stomach.

Anyone with information about the incident, which happened at the corner of Lovers Lane and Moor Road at about 17:15 GMT, should contact police.

One of the attackers is thought to have been wearing white trainers while both spoke with local accents.

A serving soldier killed a disabled man in a pub car park in Wiltshire when he punched him during a row, a court has been told.

Pte Daryl Talbot, 21, from Larkhill, appeared at Salisbury Crown Court charged with the murder of 34-year-old Jon Paul Garland on 1 January.

The court was told the University of Plymouth graduate had died from head injuries.

Mr Talbot denies murder and an alternative charge of manslaughter.

Mr Talbot, who was based at the Royal School of Artillery at Larkhill in Wiltshire at the time of the alleged incident, claimed Mr Garland tried to head butt him.

‘Vulnerable victim’

The court was told Mr Garland had a birth defect which left him with arms half the normal length and his hands not formed properly, so was not able to defend himself.

The jury heard Mr Talbot had argued with his girlfriend Alexandra Smith over another man and was angry when he met “vulnerable victim”.

Prosecution barrister Simon Edwards said: “There was no justification for the violence the physically superior defendant used towards Mr Garland that left him severely injured.

“The defendant struck Mr Garland on more than one occasion to the face and head with tragic results.

“He had little chance of defending himself or deflecting the blows because he was disabled in the sense that he had very short arms.

“There can be little doubt this defendant intentionally attacked his victim,” the barrister added.

Mr Garland, who worked in IT for the Ministry of Defence, was found in the car park and pronounced dead at the scene.

The case, which is expected to last five days, continues.

A man has been jailed for 10 years for the kidnap and manslaughter of a Teesside father.

Lee Woodier, 25, who was found guilty of kidnapping in September, has also been found guilty of manslaughter of John Newton from Redcar.

Woodier, of Shelley Road, Middlesbrough, was sentenced to five years each for kidnap and manslaughter at Teesside Crown Court.

John Newton, 45, suffered 60 internal injuries and died in March 2011.

In September, the judge Peter Fox QC ordered a retrial after the jury failed to reach a verdict on the murder charge against him.

Andrew Jackson, 25, George Thomas Jr, 52, and his son, Stephen Thomas, 30, who denied the charges, were convicted of kidnap and murder in September 2011.

Grandfather George Thomas Sr, 77, was cleared of kidnap and murder.

A man who was brain damaged at birth in a Bury hospital more than 20 years ago has received a £3.35m settlement payment from the NHS.

Adam Spinks, 24, who has cerebral palsy, was born at Fairfield Hospital in December 1986.

Mr Spinks’ family said he was starved of oxygen due to mistakes at his birth, which led to his disability.

The North West Strategic Health Authority said it wished Mr Spinks and his family “well for the future”.

While the authority has not accepted full liability for Mr Spinks’ condition, it agreed to settle the case by paying compensation at 50% of his claim.

‘Immense relief’

Mr Spinks’ solicitors said that mistakes by his surgeon had delayed his delivery by caesarean section and he had been deprived of oxygen which had contributed to his condition.

Mr Spinks’ mother Jacqueline said: “The past 24 years have been incredibly difficult for the family and we have some tough times ahead, but to know that we have the means to be able to support Adam is an immense relief.

“However, we don’t want any other families to go through the same situation, so we hope that Adam’s case will demonstrate the devastating effects that birth injuries can have and improve levels of care for pregnant women.”

A spokesman for NHS North West said: “The North West Strategic Health Authority is pleased that settlement has been agreed with the parents of Adam Spinks.

“Adam was born in December 1986 and regrettably suffered brain damage.

“Legal proceedings were commenced in 2007 and following detailed investigations, a compromise in respect of liability was reached in 2009.

“The parties then worked together to reach a financial settlement, which has now been approved by the court.”

Sally Leonards, of Manchester-based JMW Solicitors who represented Mr Spinks, said: “No amount of money will ever substitute for the ability to lead a full and normal life.

“However making Mr Spinks’ life as comfortable as possible must be the priority now and this money will enable his family to do that.”

I think this is a difficult case, readers. I can see what the theatre staff were thinking when they refused Mr Nicol’s partner the free ticket. They were considering health and safety issues. However, using a wheelchair herself does not make the lady any less able to be a carer. Theatre staff are wrong to make that suggestion.  Anyway, surely the couple know their own and each other’s abilities and surely that is all that really matters?

What do you think?

A disabled man has criticised a theatre in Surrey after he was refused a free carer’s ticket for his girlfriend because she also uses a wheelchair.

Philip Nicol, from Reigate, said after buying tickets for an act at Dorking Halls Theatre, staff phoned him back.

He was told if his partner could not help him in an emergency she was not a carer.

Mole Valley District Council defended the decision and said his partner was not entitled to a free ticket.

Mr Nicol, 48, who has a condition called Adrenomyeloneuropathy which has left him unable to walk, said he had been left feeling “useless”.

He said he and his partner had used the theatre before and had been granted a free ticket.

‘Role of a carer’

“They do not understand the disability issue at all,” he said.

“My partner cares for me when I suffer mood swings and tiredness with my condition.”

David Howell, portfolio holder for assets at the council, which runs the theatre, said: “A customer with a disability who needs a carer’s help is always entitled to a free ticket for the carer.

“However, our staff were then told that the person accompanying this customer was also a wheelchair user. It was felt they could not fulfil the role of a carer within the building, especially in an emergency.

“So in this situation they could not be classed as a carer and could not be offered free admission.”