Journalist and campaigner Michael McEwan is calling for urgent action to return people with learning disabilities and autism back to their local communities, after a BBC documentary highlighted the plight still faced by many who find themselves ‘stuck in the system’.

I can't believe we're still talking about institutions for people with a disability in 2022, but that's the harsh reality. A recent Disclosure documentary on BBC, Locked in the Hospital, highlighted this.

Those with complex needs shouldn't ever be locked up:  they should be in their own community, with friends and family to support them.

In the programme we see family struggling to get their loved ones home, and tragic stories of people with learning disabilities and autism desperate to get out of the system.

It's been almost 20 years since it was agreed disabled people shouldn’t be living in hospital. This documentary looks at why hundreds of people are still locked away. Ministers have promised to get many of these people out by March 2024 - we will see if that happens.

This powerful documentary focuses on four young men whose lives have been forever changed through experience of seclusion, restraint, violence and over medication within environments often wholly unsuitable to people’s needs.

A hospital is not a home, but that has become the reality for many. A Freedom of Information (FOI) request by the show found that 128 people had been living in a secure hospital for at least a year, with 40 having been there for more than 10 years.

I feel that I'm saying this phrase more and more now: "stuck in the system". What I mean by that is people have not been listened to or ignored.

Institutions go against basic human rights. Everyone should have a voice. When I was watching the programme, I was shocked and angry that, in certain areas, social care for the most vulnerable in society is not progressing.

Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of a Person with a Disability states that people who have a learning disability have the right to live independently and be included in their community.

Some progress has undoubtedly been made over the last 20 years with the closure of long stay institutions from the late 1990s , yet we've still a long way to go in reducing barriers faced by families in getting their son or daughter as independent a life as possible.

With more than £4bn of public money spent on adult social care in Scotland every year via 1,000 registered social care providers across country, we need to ask ourselves why this is still happening because we know that better is possible.

Michael McEwan is a freelance journalist.

Read more from Michael: A national care service for us all; Challenging learning disability stigma; Support carers through cost of living crisis