Regulator calls on learning difficulties staff to join audit

The Healthcare Commission is looking for learning difficulties staff, users and carers to take part in its national audit of services, sparked by the scandals in Cornwall and Sutton and Merton.

It wants people involved in the sector in any way to act as “peer reviewers” for the audit, which will assess services in the NHS and private sector and inspect up to 200 of these.

The peer reviewers will contribute to the inspections and the Healthcare Commission’s overall report on the state of learning difficulties services which will follow, and some of them will be paid.

The audit was announced following last July’s scathing report into abuse at Cornwall Partnership NHS Trust , and its make-up revealed following this month’s report by the commission into “institutional abuse” at Sutton and Merton Primary Care Trust.

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