EDP: Mental health trust struggling to fill nursing shifts on region’s inpatient wards

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Nicholas Carding of the Eastern Daily Press reports: Staffing levels at mental health wards are under the spotlight today after figures revealed a reduction of permanently employed nurses filling shifts. Figures show the trust’s fill-rate of nurses employed by NSFT is fluctuating between 80pc-90pc, meaning managers have to use extra funds to bring in temporary […]

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BBC News: ‘Significant increase’ in mental health patients being sent out of area

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Nic Rigby of the BBC reports: There has been a “significant increase” in the number of Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust mental health patients sent out of its area in May, a report to its board has found. Click on the image below to read the article in full on the BBC website:

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New Ways of Shirking: £1m of mental health funding under threat at NSFT after medical education failure

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The papers for last week’s Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) Board meeting report: SIFT and provision of medical undergraduate teaching. On 29th April the UEA wrote to NSFT to highlight the poor performance of teaching for Undergraduates provided by NSFT, the concerns about the length of time it has taken to make changes and the plan

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Fiscal Fantasy Island: NSFT spends over half its Out Of Trust Acute (OOA) Beds budget in first two months of the year

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The number of out of trust acute (OOA) bed days has nearly doubled: from 332 days in April 2016 to 647 days in May 2016. Most of these patients are being sent to the expensive, remote and private Mundesley Hospital, where it seems that none of the medical staff have passed the exams of the Royal

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RSA Norwich: The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions

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Terry Skyrme reflects on the recent RSA mental health event in Norwich: “Campaign supporters held a protest outside an event organized by the RSA at St Michael’s church in Norwich. Speakers at the event represented the “Third sector” and other mainstream services such as Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT), the main provider of

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The Norwich Radical: The Elephant in the Room: Norfolk’s Mental Health Crisis

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Hannah Rose reports in The Norwich Radical from the recent RSA event: Instead, I was perturbed by the oddly formal sense of occasion — cheese and wine were offered on arrival — and I was given instructions to mingle. I had the distinct feeling that I was definitely at the wrong meeting. Only around fifty chairs

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NSFT – A Warning from History: Unexpected deaths: 2013 vs 2016: Has anything changed?

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Compare what Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) claimed in 2013 with what NSFT claims in 2016. What has changed except that NSFT suffered 45 unexpected deaths in the first three months of 2016 compared with 22 per quarter in 2012-13? While the number of deaths has doubled, the excuses remain the same. Most

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Help: Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspecting NSFT in July 2016

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CQC, the independent regulator of health, mental health and adult social care in England will be inspecting Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust the week beginning the 11th July.  They would like to hear feedback about mental health services before the inspection. There are a number of ways people can feedback their views (CQC are

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Protest: RSA: “Throwing money we don’t have at a problem that just won’t go away is not the answer.”

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Tomorrow evening, on Tuesday 7th June 2016, we will be protesting at the failure to invite service users, carers and professionals to an event the purpose of which is said to be finding ‘affordable, innovative new solutions’ to mental health. We will be assembling outside St Michael at Plea in Norwich from 5.45 p.m. A

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Invitation: 6th June 2016: Meeting with NSFT about unexpected deaths at 6 p.m. today at Hellesdon Hospital

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We’re meeting the Director of Nursing, Jane Sayer, and the Medical Director, Bohdan Solomka, of Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) to discuss the extremely disappointing report into the alarming increase in unexpected deaths at NSFT to a record number. Worse still, the number of unexpected deaths continues to rise but NSFT remains complacent: there

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Complaint letter: “Don’t campaign to save… campaign for a radically different new service… with entirely new management”

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A service user of Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) writes: “I am a user of this service for more than fifteen years. In the last four years the service as become unacceptably poor. I have plenty of evidence. Although I agree that services have to be defended in as much as good levels

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EDP: Revealed: The six figure payouts for staff leaving the Norfolk and Suffolk mental health trust

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David Powles of the Eastern Daily Press and Andrew Hirst of the East Anglian Daily Times report: Two consultants involved in a “strategic reorganisation” which saw hundreds of jobs axed at the region’s mental health trust, each received payouts worth more than £200,000. Day five of our five-part series into public sector pay can reveal

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Sometimes ‘the noise’ is just too much: Speech for the minute’s silence outside Castle Mall on March for Mental Health

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Jessica Goldfinch gave an incredibly powerful and moving speech before the minute’s silence outside Castle Mall in Norwich on our March for Mental Health. Many people were moved to tears, some of them the bereaved. Others couldn’t hear Jessica speak as well as they would have liked, given that six hundred people turned up on

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Yet another death: Enough is enough

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Today, another young women has died after Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) ignored her family’s desperate pleas for help. Yet another ‘unexpected death‘ to add to the statistics. Yet another inquest. For how much longer can the NHS be allowed to let down families in East Anglia in their hours of greatest need?

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Gallery: March for Mental Health, King’s Lynn

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Today, members of the Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk from throughout East Anglia joined local people from West Norfolk to protest against the closure of one quarter of the remaining acute mental health beds in West Norfolk at the Fermoy Unit in King’s Lynn and to highlight the threat to

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EDP: Protesters in King’s Lynn fight against mental health service cuts

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Sophie Biddle of the EDP reports: More than 100 campaigners pounded the pavements from The Walks and through the town centre before finishing outside the Majestic Cinema to hear speeches. The protest was triggered by the Fermoy Centre, an in-patient NHS facility for mental health, facing closure. Beth Anthony, 18 of Dersingham, is youth officer

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EDP: The best April Fool’s Day posts we’ve spotted in Norfolk, Suffolk and Fenland

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Courtney Pochin of the EDP reports: Salary cuts The Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk released a statement today, which said that the Chief Executive of Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) was going to “voluntarily reduce his salary by £35,000”. If only the greed of Michael Scott and the

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Well done, Mr. Scott: Campaign statement on the salary of the Chief Executive of NSFT

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Strictly embargoed: Not for publication or broadcast prior to 0000 BST on 01/04/2016: A spokesperson for the Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk said: “When we heard the rumours that the Chief Executive of Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT), Michael Scott, was going to voluntarily reduce his salary by £35,000,

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EDP: “We are long way off parity of esteem” – shadow mental health minister Luciana Berger hits out at government during visit to region

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Nicholas Carding of the Eastern Daily Press reports on our meeting with Luciana Berger, Shadow Cabinet Minister for Mental Health and Clive Lewis, MP for Norwich South: A senior politician today said parity of esteem is still not occuring within the NHS. Ms Berger, MP for Liverpool Wavertree, met with members of Save Mental Health

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EDP: How can they justify this?

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Nicholas Carding of the EDP reports: Senior managers at Norfolk’s four clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) pocketed more than £100,000 in pay rises between 2013/14 and 2014/15, the latest figures available, which a former health minister has described as “unjustified”. According to official documents, the amount spent by the CCGs on wages rose by £350,000 from

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