ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at hospital failures in the past and considers similarities between them and Mid-Staffordshire. It then shifts focus and looks at care of vulnerable children and at care of people with a learning disability, at mental health services and maternity care. The chapter examines breakdowns in all these varied settings. How similar are underlying causes and the nature of responses in Rotherham's children's services, in Winterbourne View, in Southern Health, in Whorlton Hall Hospital, in Nottingham University Hospitals and in Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust? All these are examples of places where major problems have emerged since 2012. The report of the Ockenden Inquiry into maternity care in Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust came out in March 2022. This report, and many of the comments that immediately followed it, made clear reference to the inquiry into the Mid-Staffordshire case and drew comparisons with governance failures in that trust, and in other trusts where problems had occurred in the years between 2012 and 2022. The chapter concludes by considering what the cumulative impact of so many problems, in so many places and over the same period of time, has on trust and on the social contract.
