Response to Debbie White's Radio Interview

[Terry Skyrme]

I’ve just arrived home after a stint on AMHP duty; at 5.30 pm we received two requests for Mental Health Act assessments on two elderly people with dementia; there were no beds available for these patients. For two days the Crisis Resolution Team has been trying to arrange an urgent admission for an acutely ill patient at high risk of self-harm and suicide; no beds available in Norfolk and Suffolk. At a late hour a private bed is found in North London; this is turned down as the patient needs the close support of her family. When a senior manager of the Trust comes on the radio and does not admit that we are in crisis, or even that there are any problems, it makes you despair; they must be so divorced from the frontline and from service-users’ experience. They have to go!