Winterbourne: home truths for all

While sharing the horrific reaction of many to the BBC Panorama programme on abuse at Winterbourne View, Peter White says that it raises questions of blame which go beyond those people directly in the firing line

When I was about twenty I went for an interview with Community Service Volunteers. I needed a year to sort myself out after flunking out of a law degree, and thought I wanted to do something “useful” with it! They asked me if there was anything I wouldn’t do. It was a good question, and I thought hard.

My answer was an honest one! I said I didn’t want to work with people with learning disabilities (we didn’t call them that then). I’m not proud of that answer because of what it says about me, but I’m reasonably proud of the self-knowledge it showed!

What it means though is that when I hear about cases such as the one revealed by Panorama at Winterbourne View, I try to check my natural, but in my case self-indulgent reaction of horror, anger, disgust! I check it against my own unwillingness and unfitness to take on that responsibility, and I question who as a society we are asking to do that job!

The likely answer is people who are undertrained, underpaid, under-supported; who may well not have English as a first language; and who probably have few other employment choices. I don’t say that low pay, lack of support, and coming from abroad leads to or justifies any of that behaviour; just that the combination of it makes it more likely!

And we all share the blame! Administrators of care, public and private, who are allowing financial considerations and issues of theoretical compliance to weigh more heavily than tender loving care; politicians who are usually so far removed from the reality that their platitudinous expressions of indignation and promises of commissions of inquiry and new bodies hide the fact that this problem is hardly on their radar, let alone a priority; and a public which is full of people like me – those who think it’s someone else’s problem, are glad it’s not theirs, and, after an hour of genuine horror in front of their televisions, turn to other matters.

We should be horrified; we should be angry; we should seek answers: but in all of that let’s not forget, those of us who turn away from the bullies with embarrassment, and don’t try to stop it, are almost as bad as the bullies themselves! Guilty, as charged.