‘My daughter had been kidnapped’
This is the heading of profoundly disturbing and important story aired by the excellent ‘ITV News’ investigation team.[1] The story recounts how many parents are facing severe restrictions on visiting their disabled children in care homes: adult children as well as younger children who, in many cases, were placed in care homes against their parent’s wishes.
The theme running through the ITV report, is of families expressing concern about their child’s unacceptable ‘care’ arrangements and then finding themselves being banned or being threatened with severe restrictions on their visiting arrangements. Retaliatory action of this kind (being victimised for complaining) is all too familiar for families with disabled children. Our 2023 research concerning the prevalence and impact of allegations of Fabricated or Induced Illness (FII) found that in half of all cases, an allegation of FII was made after a parent had made a formal complaint – and this consequential and acute harm was given particular emphasis by parents in the survey underpinning the 2025 ‘Systems Generated Trauma‘ research. Punitive behaviour of this kind is all too real: all too familiar to families with disabled children.
From a legal perspective, what is so incredibly depressing about the ITV report, is the complete lack of redress available to the parents. The placing local authority, the Court of Protection, the regulators all appear to operate on the basis that institutions are ‘good’ and parents are ‘trouble’.
In researching the story, ITV had contact with 50 parents who, it seems, had been the subject of Court ‘Transparency Orders’. In true Orwellian Doublespeak terms, these are the antithesis of ‘transparent’ – they are gagging orders that purport to be in the disabled person’s ‘best interests’. Accordingly, the parents appearing in the ITV programme had pseudonyms and pixilated faces.
From my own experience the ITN report is utterly authentic: draconian interferences with disabled people’s (and their families’) rights to respect for their ‘family and private life’ are occurring on an industrial scale. Institutional care providers are in a dominant position and, all too often, ‘call all the shots’.
Why is it that the governments (national and local), the courts and the regulators place such trust in the quality of institutional care while simultaneously distrusting the parents of disabled children? How many more abuse scandals do we have to have, before determined positive action is taken to dismantle this culture of ‘institutions good’ / ‘families bad’?
Over 175 years ago Samuel Gridley Howe is reported to have said:[2]
all such institutions are unnatural, undesirable and very liable to abuse. We should have as few of them as possible, and those few should be kept as small as possible. The human family is the unit of society.
Intellectually governments, judges and regulators must know of the severe dangers that care institutions pose for disabled people – of how defenceless people are when they find themselves behind closed doors – away from the protective gaze of the families, friends and communities.
This much we learn and re-learn with each new exposé – as it is the media and not the ‘justice’ system that calls out these scandals. A few examples, from an all too crowded field, illustrate this point.
In 1967 it was the News of the World that broke the story on the abuse at Ely Hospital.[3] In 1994 it was the Slough Observer that published details of abuse, neglect and rape of disabled people in Longcare homes. In 2006 it was the Guardian among others that published details of the appalling level of abuse suffered by disabled people in institutions run by the Cornwall Partnership NHS Trust. In 2011 it was undercover filming by the BBC that broke the Winterbourne View scandal and in 2011 it was a whistleblower who broke the story concerning the abuse at Atlas Care homes.[4] In 2018 it was the BBC, again, that exposed the abuse at Whorlton Hall hospital as it was in 2022 when it uncovered abuse at the Hesley Group care homes.[5] In 2020 it was a member of staff who alerted authorities to the abuse at Grove House[6] and in 2025 it was an ITV News investigation that exposed the abuse occurring at residential and supported living homes run by Lifeways.[7]
Five years ago a major review by the Care Quality Commission concerning the care of disabled people, ‘talked the talk’[8] and acknowledged the trauma generated by the dysfunctional care system – concluding:
Through our review, we found that time and time again people were not getting the care they need, when they need it. We have attempted to reflect what we saw and the many examples we found of care that was undignified, inhumane and that potentially breached people’s basic human rights. We are grateful to those who have shared their experiences with us, and hope this will go some way to illustrate the trauma they have been through when they have sadly been failed by the system that was established to care and protect them (whether due to hospital admission from lack of crisis care, segregation or inappropriate use of restraint).
Cumulatively, the evidence that we have gathered points to a system where people with complex needs fall through the gaps. We cannot be confident that their human rights are upheld, let alone be confident that they are supported to live fulfilling lives.
We found it is possible to support people well in the community, but care packages are often not available. … . There have been too many missed opportunities to improve the lives of autistic people and people with a learning disability and/or mental health condition, whose behaviour others find challenging. Immediate action is needed to put an end to the abuses in human rights that we have seen throughout this review. This action must be owned and led from the top by government, delivered by local systems working together, and involve people and their families to ensure the needs of the individual are met.
Five years on it is abundantly clear that ‘the government’ is unable to ‘walk the walk’: unable to ‘own’ and to ‘lead’ the necessary reforms. No matter how dreadful the inhuman and degrading treatment, no matter how severe the interferences are, with private and family lives, governments find themselves incapable of taking the necessary action. Even if the cultural change required is simply too difficult (ie of ‘listening’ to and ‘trusting’ parents) and even if it is too complicated to recognise that placing a disabled person in an institution, is to place them in harm’s way – one can at least hope that governments are able to grasp the issue of ‘cost’.
The parents interviewed in the ITV programme did not want their children to go into institutional care – but were told (when the child became 18) that this is what would happen – and it did: the assertion being that this was done on ‘costs’ grounds. But, with the greatest of respect, this is nonsense. Governments are fully aware of institutional care costs. Before its closure, a place at the Winterbourne View private hospital cost, on average, £3,500 per week (inflation adjusted this would be over £6,000 today);[9] at Hesley Group care homes[10] the cost was estimated to be £250,000 a year in 2023 and a place at Lifeways[11] last year was estimated to cost between £3,500 and £6,000 per week (between 2016 and April 2025 the care group received ‘almost £1.5 billion in taxpayer money). Families are routinely highlighting the fact that community-based care packages could be provided at far less expense: that it is (as an earlier posting makes clear[12]) ‘budgets’ not ‘costs’ that dictate where a disabled person with significant care needs lives.
For a note concerning the relevant statutory and regulatory provisions that are engaged when a Care Home, Council or a NHS body seek to restrict contact with a resident or to terminate their contract click here.
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[1] Daniel Hewitt ‘My daughter had been kidnapped’: The families blocked from seeing their disabled loved ones ITV 16 February 2026.
[2] Cited by Sir Stephen Bubb in his foreword to the Report by the Transforming Care and Commissioning Steering Group Winterbourne View – Time For Change: Transforming the commissioning of services for people with learning disabilities and/or autism 2014. It is possible this was said by Howe in his In ceremonies on laying the corner-stone of the New York State institution for the blind, at Batavia, Genesee County, New York, (Batavia: Henry Todd, 1866) – but I’d love to know if this is so.
[3] Department of Health and Social Security Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Allegations of Ill – Treatment of Patients and other irregularities at the Ely Hospital, Cardiff. DHSS; 1969. The full report does not appear to be available on but the Conclusions and Recommendations (Chapter 13) can be accessed by clicking here.
[4] Torbay and Devon Safeguarding Adults Partnership Board Atlas Care families respond with dignity and determination (2021).
[5] N Titheradge Children punched and hit over the head in care homes rated ‘good’ BBC 24 January 2023 which noted that despite 104 reports of concern made at the homes and many other warnings Ofsted provided the care hones with a ‘good’ Ofsted ratings until their closure was announced.
[6] M Buchanan Sutton: Three jailed for abusing care home residents with learning disabilities BBC 4 January 2024.
[7] D Hewitt It’s a life-or-death situation’: New allegations of neglect at major care company ITV 15 April 2025.
[8] Care Quality Commission Out of sight who cares? A review of restraint, seclusion and segregation for autistic people, and people with a learning disability and/or mental health condition (2020).
[9] LGA A place I call home: responding to Winterbourne View (2014) p.4.
[10] N Titheradge Children punched and hit over the head in care homes rated ‘good’ BBC 24 January 2023.
[11] D Hewitt It’s a life-or-death situation’: New allegations of neglect at major care company ITV 15 April 2025.
[12] See the posting ‘Disabled children 3 times more likely to be the subject of safeguarding’ 2 December 2025 and its discussion concerning the judgment in the case of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council v Mother & Ors [2025] EWFC 78 (B).
Posted 17 February 2026