Letter: Bring people with learning disabilities in from the cold

Sir: A woman with 'learning disabilities' regularly taking her food outside to eat alone in the cold ('Secret report alleges systematic abuse of handicapped adults', 16 September). There could be no clearer or more heartbreaking image of the place we, as a community, assign to so many people with special needs - excluded from company, from the communal table, from society.

I could hardly bear to read these reports, feeling overwhelmed with revulsion and helplessness. But we are not helpless. Many aspects of the social, political, legal and financial questions raised have been commented on in your columns but, surely, as you point out in Saturday's leading article, we can act to prevent such hideous abuse, we can include people living in residential homes in our concerns and our lives.

For most of us it is too hard to act alone, but if every residential home - for children, old people, or those with special needs - was linked to a local community group (social, religious, educational, or perhaps one specially set up for this purpose), with a large enough pool of people to provide regular visitors, befrienders, listeners - and if necessary advocates - might this not go a long way to change the isolated conditions in which such horrors can flourish, and create relationships that would enrich all our lives?

The greatest hope anyone has who is suffering at the hands of another is that someone outside knows, and cares, and will act. People who should have acted here have clearly been grossly negligent. Please let us all act now, in our own locality, and turn our horror and shame into friendship with our neighbours.

Yours in grief and hope,

JULIET BUCKNER

London, E8

20 September