I worked for a few years as a support worker for adults with complex behavioral needs and severe learning difficulties in the UK.

Clients (weird term tbh but better than patients I guess?) Were supposed to be assigned an avocate. The role where I worked was voluntary. If they were lucky, they would get someone who was pretty good at it. Most weren't lucky tbh.

When I was working, they were finalising the process of farming out care to private companies. I never saw a company that followed care reccomendations on things like ratio of staff to clients, long term contracts so that support workers and clients were able to form a proper bond/relationship. Understaffed, overworked, underskilled and underpaid basically summed it up. The companies see these people as cash cows. I heard management either expressing pleasure at getting a client cos they drew down a lot of funding or exhasperation as they bought in little funding. Disgusting. Where I worked, two clients were reclassified as needing residential care simply because the company then didn't need to provide as much support.

Long story short, for someone in a care home or residential care with learning disabilities you either need careworkers who give a shit (and to be fair a decent number of people I worked with were saints, frankly) or parents/relatives with the knowledge and motivation to really kick up a fuss and be willing to drag the company to the courts or qcc. Many people in that position have not got that.

This article doesn't surprise me at all.