A charity that ran a care home where autistic people were taunted, bullied and humiliated by staff has escaped prosecution over its failings.
The National Autistic Society has agreed to pay a £4,000 fixed penalty notice instead of facing a potential prosecution over Mendip House in Somerset.
A whistleblower claimed one resident of Mendip House was slapped, forced to eat chillies and repeatedly thrown into a swimming pool.
In another incident highlighted in the report, a staff member is said to have put a ribbon around a resident’s neck and ridden him “like a horse”.
A review by the Somerset Safeguarding Adults Board (SSAB) said parallels had been drawn to the case of Winterbourne View, the private hospital near Bristol where people with severe learning difficulties were abused.
Mendip House was closed down and the residents, some of whom had lived there for many years, were found new placements. Staff were disciplined and the police investigated but nobody was charged and it was left to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to decide what, if any, further action should be taken.
The CQC has served a fixed penalty notice on the NAS in relation to an aspect of the abuse – that residents had been funding staff meals during outings.
The CQC said: “We have served a fixed penalty notice on The National Autistic Society for failing to meet fundamental standards at Mendip House in Somerset … Fines totalling £4,000 have been paid as an alternative to prosecution.”
Stephen Chandler, director of adult services at Somerset council, expressed surprise at the size of the fine. He said: “For me it is surprisingly low given the level of failure that occurred at Mendip House and what a sum such as that means for anyone as big as NAS – £4,000 is the cost of what NAS would be paid for a week or two caring for a person with specialist needs.”
Mark Lever, chief executive of the NAS, apologised again for what happened at Mendip House. He said: “Among the mistreatment uncovered at that time, it was identified that some members of staff had made the people they supported pay for staff meals while on trips out. This was wrong and should not have been allowed to happen. We reimbursed the money in full in June 2016.
“The CQC rightly initiated an investigation into this financial abuse … and, in January this year, issued our charity with a fixed penalty notice of £4,000 because of the failure to comply with regulations which ‘ensure systems and processes must be established and operated effectively to prevent financial abuse of service users’. We have accepted and paid this penalty notice.”
