Legal: NHS Trusts & CCGs face criminal prosecution and unlimited fines for inappropriate discharges and placements. Individual staff face up to two years’ imprisonment

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Below is an excellent and informative bulletin on the subject of the legal obligations of NHS trusts regarding discharges and placements.  It was prepared by the former solicitors of Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT), Mills & Reeve, in July 2012.  The bulletin was widely circulated within NSFT.  Let’s hope that NSFT’s new in-house […]

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EDP: Carlton Colville woman blasts mental health chiefs over cuts

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A woman whose husband suffers from dementia has criticised proposed cuts to mental health services in Waveney and Great Yarmouth, saying lives are being destroyed by measures designed to save money. Mrs Sale, of Rushmere Road, Carlton Colville, said her husband was sent to the Coach House specialist dementia care home in Hemsby, where she

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Quiz Answer: The increase in staffing at NSFT after the three month recruitment drive was NINE!

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Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) managed to add just NINE out of its pledged 269 additional staff. That is only 3.3 per cent of its target and an average net increase of three per month. This isn’t a laughing matter.  Staff are desperately needed because: community team caseloads are unmanageable and unsafe; wards

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Quiz time: What is the increase in staffing at NSFT after the three month recruitment drive?

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Remember this from April 2014? “Directors were told that the mental health trust had secured an extra £500,000 from Clinical Commissioning Groups in Norfolk to help hire new staff to meet demand. It comes after NSFT officials announced last week that 269 of 412 vacancies would be filled in the next three months.” At the time,

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EDP: Mental health trust under fire again after second man falls to his death at the Castle Mall

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One of our key recommendations for ending the crisis in mental health services at Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) is the restoration of decent mental health services for the most vulnerable. The specialist assertive outreach teams which national guidance and evidence recommends have not just been cut but rather completely closed, leaving those

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Why the CQC selected NSFT for early inspection in its own words: Decision to schedule Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust for Inspection

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We wrote to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) because Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) has been claiming that the forthcoming CQC inspection is routine/random and that the Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk & Suffolk was being inaccurate and misleading to write that NSFT had been selected as a priority for early

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Lara Norris: Tick Box – Cardboard Box – Soap Box

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  The following is reproduced from the blog of Lara Norris, a campaign supporter and prospective parliamentary candidate for Great Yarmouth, with her kind permission: “This week I want to tell you the story of Holly (not her real name) and why she illustrates how people have ceased to be at the centre of our

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Audio: Campaigner Emma Corlett of Unison interviewed on BBC Radio Norfolk about massive cuts envisaged by NSFT’s 5 Year Strategic Plan

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We have already written about the massive cuts envisaged by the 5 Year Plan submitted by Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) to its regulator, Monitor. At the NSFT Board meeting last week, one of the non-executive directors of NSFT acknowledged that the real-terms depth of the planned cuts is 7.5 per cent per

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EDP: Mental health trust warns of more jobs cuts in Norfolk and Suffolk as part of plans to make £44m more savings

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Campaigners have pledged to lobby Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust’s (NSFT) board of directors meeting today over a new plan, which says that extra savings of £44m would need to be found by 2019, if there is no major increase in mental health funding. Members of the Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in

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NSFT pulls its Five Year Strategic Plan from the internet

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But you can still read our copy of the five year strategic plan here. The plan begins on page 20 of the pdf. Strange the way it disappeared after we criticised it. The papers for the Board of Directors meeting in Swaffam tomorrow don’t contain it any longer. How embarrassing.

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26th June 2014: Help us oppose the NSFT Board’s five year plan for further ‘savings’ of £44.1 million, 200 more job losses and more reorganisations and chaos

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Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) Chair, Gary Page, is too busy watching the football in sunny Brazil to attend the next public Board of Directors meeting at The Green Britain Centre (formerly Eco-Tech) in Swaffam on Thursday, 26th June 2014. But it is vital that we attend. Join us to oppose the rubber stamping

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NSFT seeks to reduce out of area placements by refusing emergency admissions rather than by providing necessary beds

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A member of the Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) crisis team writes: “NSFT seems determined to reduce the number of out of area placements but not by providing an adequate number of local beds. A senior NSFT manager is going around the country trying to discharge out of area patients. How can this

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Exclusive: Letter to HealthEast from all Waveney AMHPs exposes crisis in Suffolk and calls for NSFT Executive Board to resign

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“NSFT are not to fit to lead or manage mental health services in Great Yarmouth and Waveney. The testimony and reflection above demonstrates this. As such, nothing they propose can be trusted by the CCG to be able to address the endemic problems they themselves have caused. The Waveney AMHP group calls on the CCG

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BBC: Norfolk and Suffolk mental health patients in 200-mile bed trek

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“Some mental health patients in Suffolk and Norfolk are having to travel more than 200 miles (321km) for a bed, it has emerged. Health secretary Jeremy Hunt said the situation was “unacceptable”. Unison urged the government to develop a “rescue package” for mental health services, which they said left 22 patients facing the journey last

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EDP: ‘Unacceptable’ – health secretary Jeremy Hunt pledges action on out of area mental health placements in Norfolk and Suffolk

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Adam Gretton of the Eastern Daily Press (EDP) reports: The government’s health minister pledged to “do what it takes” to address the pressure on mental health beds after being told of some Norfolk and Suffolk patients having to travel more than 200 miles for a bed. When told about the situation at NSFT, Mr Hunt

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Newsflash: NSFT a priority for inspection by CQC under new approach

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The CQC website reports: The first batch of NHS mental health providers will be inspected and rated in October using our new approach. The inspections will assess the four providers to see if the service overall is: safe, effective, caring, responsive to people’s needs and well-led. They will be carried out by a mixture of

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EDP: Graphic – Mental health patients sent to Yorkshire, London and North East after trust misses target to end bed placements outside of Norfolk

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But Terry Skyrme, who works as a social worker for the NHS trust and member of the Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk, said that when he left work last Wednesday there were 21 patients in out of area beds, with the vast majority in private hospitals across the country. He

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EDP Editorial: Pledge has been broken

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“At a time when public funds are stretched, there are huge questions to be asked about the cost of sending people hundreds of miles away to private mental health beds. But on a human level, the practice of dispatching vulnerable patients so far from friends and family, must stop. Officials from the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS

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Devastating HealthEast consultation: NSFT is breaking the law and ignoring NICE and Department of Health guidance

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“Managers are in the impossible situation of holding medical recommendations for admission to hospital, but unable to comply with their duty under section 13 MH Act 1983. We have reached a point where Approved Mental Health Professionals (AMHPs) are no longer able to operate on a legal basis. Patients’ safety is being placed at risk, and their

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