EDP Front Page: Mental health patients in ‘acute distress’ STILL sent miles away five years after pledge to end practice

Geraldine Scott of the Eastern Daily Press reports: Scores of mental health patients in “acute distress” were sent out of Norfolk and Suffolk for care – despite five years of promises that the practice would end. With services bursting at the seams, 82 people from the two counties were shipped away from their homes and […]

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BBC News: Mental health: The NHS patients who are ‘abused and ignored’

Nick Triggle of BBC News reports: New rights should be given to severely ill mental health patients detained in hospital to stop abuse and neglect of this vulnerable group, a review says. The 1983 Mental Health Act is outdated and needs an overhaul, sectioning is being misused and does not properly protect patients’ rights, it

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BBC News: Peter Wrighton murder: Alexander Palmer doctors ‘warned’ of knife hoard

Robby West and Matt Precey of the BBC report: The parents of a mentally ill ex-soldier warned a health trust he was collecting knives before he murdered an 83-year-old dog walker. Alexander Palmer, 24, stabbed Peter Wrighton 45 times in woodland near East Harling, Norfolk, in August. A letter from a Norfolk and Suffolk NHS

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Beds Crisis: EDP: Man spends nearly three days in police custody waiting for a mental health bed

Geraldine Scott of the Eastern Daily Press reports: A man was held in police custody for nearly 60 hours while he waited for a mental health bed to become available. The man – one of 10 similar cases recorded by police between May 2016 and February 2017 – was arrested for a public order offence

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Fixed, Flawed Farce: Part 3: EDP: A staggering waste: More than £1.6m spent sending region’s mental health patients to private hospital in just seven months

Geraldine Scott of the Eastern Daily Press reports: More than £1.6m has been spent by the region’s mental health trust on sending patients to a private hospital since it was put into special measures by inspectors last year. Mental health campaigners alleged Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust (NSFT) continue to use the private Mundesley Hospital,

Fixed, Flawed Farce: Part 3: EDP: A staggering waste: More than £1.6m spent sending region’s mental health patients to private hospital in just seven months Read More »

Fixed, Flawed Farce: Part 2: EDP: Half of mental health beds budget for Norfolk and Suffolk spent in first month of year

Tom Bristow, Investigations Editor of the Eastern Daily Press reports: Last year the Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust (NSFT) went £3.5m over budget on sending patients to beds at other facilities, including private hospitals and out of the area. Its budget for buying beds from other providers is £1m a year. But it used almost

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Beds Crisis: EDP: How 140 NHS mental health beds have been cut in Norfolk and Suffolk

Investigative reporter Tom Bristow of the Eastern Daily Press reports: A quarter of mental health beds in Norfolk and Suffolk have been lost in the last four years. While England has seen the number of mental health beds fall by 3,500 since 2012, a drop of 16pc, the Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust (NSFT), which

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Beds Crisis: EDP: Campaigners criticise new mental health trust proposals: ‘We want beds not cups of tea’

Geraldine Scott of the Eastern Daily Press reports: No new beds for patients in psychiatric crisis will be made available by the region’s mental health trust, despite concerns being raised by the health watchdog over that a shortage of beds “had impaired patient safety and treatment at times”. We haven’t found a senior doctor at

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Social and fundraiser: Friday 18th March at The Angel Gardens, 96 Angel Road, Norwich NR3 3HT, 1900-2300

The membership of the Norwich and District TUC has chosen our campaign for their next fundraising social event. That’s great news. Even better, campaign supporters are invited along for beer, live music from The Red Flags and games at the Angel Gardens, 96 Angel Road, Norwich NR3 3HT from 7 p.m. until 11 p.m. on

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BBC News: Mental health death after Norfolk and Suffolk trust failure

Nic Rigby of the BBC reports: A mental health patient died after a “failure” to respond in a “timely way” by a stretched health trust team, a report says. The Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust report said there were “serious capacity issues” with its crisis resolution team. It says another death occurred after a patient

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Gallery: Slides from Public Meeting: What is happening at NSFT? Do we still need a campaign?

You can view the presentation in the Gallery below or download the slides as a pdf to view offline, distribute or print.   The sources of the employment data are the various Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) Annual Report and Accounts published between 2011 and 2015. The sources of the Serious Incident (SI)

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The Guardian: Rise in Mental Health Act detentions shows ‘services struggling to cope’

Aisha Gani and James Meikle of The Guardian report: Official figures say detentions under the Act have risen nearly 10% in a year, causing concern among charities that services are failing to act early. Mental health campaigners have expressed concern that detentions under the Mental Health Act have risen by almost 10% in England in

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Carer’s letter to the Guardian: ‘Will it be my relative next?’

15th October 2015 Despite family pleas for appropriate treatment, a long term user of Norfolk’s mental health services cut her own throat today.  Visited by a Social worker yesterday, she was “placed on the waiting list for assessment under the Mental Health Act” because when last seen she was observed to be suffering harrowing hallucinations

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Fantasy Island: The CQC Video Files: ‘Well-led’

What’s the best thing to come out of service strategy? A majority of respondents replied ‘nothing’ when asked their views on the best thing to come out of Service Strategy. One reflected sadly, ‘finding positives is difficult. I rely on finding positives for my clients’. Alexander Report This ‘corporate video’ was made in preparation for

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Express and Star: Mental health patient spent 64 HOURS in police custody because there were no NHS beds in the country

The country has run out of mental health beds after the closure of more than two thousand NHS beds. The Express and Star reports: A mental health patient spent 64 hours in police custody, taking 22 officers off the streets and costing taxpayers’ £20,000 – because there were no available NHS beds in the entire country.

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BBC News: NHS ‘had no mental health beds left’

Nikki Fox of the BBC reports on the meltdown in mental health services: An NHS trust was told there were no mental health beds available across England, its medical director has said. Dr Bohdan Solomka told the BBC on Sunday the lack of beds applied across the NHS and among private providers. This weekend, Norfolk

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Community Care: Mental health trust should face special measures over ‘inadequate’ safety and leadership, says CQC

We were all delighted to meet Andy McNicoll, deservedly Mind Mental Health Journalist of the Year, at our campaign meeting yesterday. Ethical investigative journalism is a critical component in our campaign and Andy McNicoll’s work with the BBC’s Michael Buchanan has been of the highest quality. In November 2013 a campaign led by frontline staff

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An open letter to NSFT, its Board of Governors and the CCGs: Why the Ashcroft contract should be ongoing

An open letter to NSFT, its Board of Governors and the CCGs Why the Ashcroft contract should be ongoing The Bed Crisis Over the last two years, there has been a serious shortage of acute inpatient provision. The number of patients placed out of area, in expensive private hospitals, has fluctuated constantly from a low

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