Transcript for the video Donna and Andre's story in the annual report for 2018-19
Donna is waiting on the platform as the train approaches.
[Tube train pulling into platform]
[Title card] Donna is a NHS nurse living in Kent. Today she's visiting her brother Andre at his new care home.
Donna is walking to the care home.
[footsteps]
[Title card] In June 2019, the H&F Safeguarding team intervened to remove Andre from the care home he was living in due to neglect.
Donna: Andy, what have I got here?
Facing Andre who is sitting in a chair with a stuffed animal, Donna slowly pulls out a helimum balloon from a carrier bag
Donna: Is that better than your toy? Is it better than your toy?
[Andy reaches out to grab the string tied to the balloon]
Donna: Let me come around that side.
[Donna moves from Andre's right side to his left]
Donna: Right, you don't know what to do now, do you? You can have the balloon.
Andre is my older brother, he was my mother's first child and he was born about five weeks premature.
Apparently had a brain hemorrhage 24 hours after birth, but the the brain injury from the bleed has meant that he is perhaps got the mental age of somewhere between nine and 18 months.
As my mother was getting older, her biggest fear was 'what would happen if something happened to her?' especially as she had to divorce my father.If something happened to her, the only option in society at that time was what was known as state mental institutes and they really were dreadful places, they were like prisons, and Andre would have died very quickly being in a place like that.
Archive footage in black and white is shown of a mental institute. We see rows and rows and beds, a patient being helped by staff and then patients sleeping at night.
Donna: Then she set up the Peter Pan Trust to open up the first home in Hammersmith and Fulham for people with severe learning disabilities. And after many years of hard work and dedication, the first home for 6 people with severe learning disabilities was opened in Hammersmith and Fulham, and Andre lived there successfully in a virtually a home from home until my mother died.
Archive footage is shown of a teenage Andre and his mother at the opening of the care home.
Also my first husband was sick [and] I was very worried about the future of a small trust surviving. And so I made what I thought at the time was a prudent decision to approach another local organisation, a charity, that offered similar services but on a larger scale, and asked them if they would take on Angela House.
But by the time our existing manager left in 2016, the staff were already complaining of funding problems and trying to keep the house as nice as it had always been kept.
Cut away shot of a bathroom sink with limescale and water dripping from the tap. Light blub flashing on and off. Cigarette butts in an ashtray as smoke drifts off from on recently put out.
CQC visits were deeming the home as 'needing to improve' and every report was 'needing to improve', 'needing to improve'. But they were not meeting the expectations of CQC and ultimately in June of last year, being put into special measures.
Social services at that point in June rang me on a Friday evening, I was in the middle of getting dinner, to inform me that Andre was being removed from the home. It was just like a sledgehammer, it was just like the biggest shock.
If you can imagine the amount of thoughts going through my head. Andre is homeless. The home that my mother set up, that was once beautiful, is being shut down by CQC. And what the hell has been going on? I was just absolutely horrified. And you know, it's been a process since then to go through.
[Andre is playing with the balloon and lets go of the string]
Donna: Whoops, where's it gone? Can you get it down now?
[Andre grabs the sting and pulls the balloon back down]
Donna: [The] safeguarding process that I have been through with Hammersmith and Fulham in the last 6 months has been a really positive experience.
That is because everybody that was involved was willing to listen. But they also could see from their own point of view, what they would want. As the Assistant Director of Social Services said to me when we were trying to find the home, 'I want them to have a home that I would want to live in myself'. And that is in essence what I think they have achieved.
We are shown a photo of Andre as an adult.
Donna: You know, people need shelter and they need their health and they need food and warmth. But life is so much more than that, it's so much more enriching. We need social contact, we need love, we need activities. The environment that you live in, that's your home, it's where you feel safe and secure.
Donna is gazing lovingly at Andre while he plays with his stuffed toy. A care worker helps Andre to take sips from his drink. Donna and another care worker move Andre in his wheelchair.
Donna: I really like coming here myself and could come and stay if I wish now, but also the other part of it was the people that were going to come in and care for Andre 24/7. Andre is starting now to have an active life again with lots of activities in the week. And staff that are really lovely and really care about what they do.
Photos of Donna and Andre from some of his birthdays. The last is of Andre smiling.
Donna: For me, social services and many people locally and involved with people in residential care, have to go in and check that the service they expect to be provided is being provided.
And I think for all of these organizations, whether they are trustees on boards of charities, whether they are social services, whether they are just casual visitors or other therapists going in, what I always think they should ask themselves when they visit these homes is 'Would they want to live there themselves?' and if the answer is no, ask yourself 'Why?'
Because you know what you expect from your own standard of living and the life you lead. And that's what you should expect for the people that you are providing a service for you.
[Title card] This video was created for LBHF's annual safeguarding visual report.