Two scandals: the death of Ann Marie Smith in Australia and the Whorlton Hall scandal in Britain

Abstract

This article examines two recent scandals of abuse and neglect of people with disabilities, namely the death of Ann Marie Smith in Australia and the Whorlton Hall scandal in Britain. The facts of both cases have been established from the formal reports and records of legislators and regulators about the scandals, supplemented by publicly-available court documents and media reports. Using high-level thematic analysis, institutional responses to the two cases are compared by examining the conclusions and recommendations of the resulting formal inquiries. The article identifies lessons from the two cases for improving the safeguarding of people with disabilities, namely for: improved information flows and coordination; strengthened legislation; processes for identifying people at risk; improved outputs of quality audits; enhanced resourcing of advocacy; and the extension of community visitor schemes.

Keywords:

• Abuse
• neglect
• quality
• safeguarding
• regulation

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges with thanks the comments of the two anonymous reviewers and of Gilbert Kruidenier.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).