EDP: Norfolk and Suffolk mental health trust loses cash and UEA medical students amid training concerns

Tom Bristow of the Eastern Daily Press reports: The region’s mental health trust has been stripped of some medical students and funding amid concerns about the quality of its training. The Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust (NSFT) was being paid by Health Education England (HEE) to train 47 medical students from the University of East […]

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CAMHS Crisis: BBC News: Norfolk and Suffolk NHS mental health facility has empty beds

Nikki Fox of the BBC reports: Mental health campaigners are “incredulous” five beds for children are unused when 20 patients are being treated “out of the area”. Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) created a 12-bed unit in Lowestoft, costing £1m, in September. NHS England said it provides funding to staff seven of the

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Deaths Crisis: North Norfolk News: Gresham’s School sixthformer Rebecca Haley had watched programme featuring depression and suicide before taking her own life

Geraldine Scott of Norfolk Norfolk News reports: Rebecca Haley, known to friends as Becca, died on April 30 at the boarding school in Cromer Road, Holt. Rebecca was one of a staggering twenty Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) patients to die unexpected deaths in April 2016. In the first full year of NSFT’s

Deaths Crisis: North Norfolk News: Gresham’s School sixthformer Rebecca Haley had watched programme featuring depression and suicide before taking her own life Read More »

Newsflash: Meeting at NHS Improvement today to decide whether Monitor should release NSFT from Special Measures

Today, officials meet at NHS Improvement (NHSI) to decide whether Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation should be released from Special Measures. Usually, when a health trust is put into Special Measures, money follows from commissioners to help put things right. This has not happened at NSFT. In fact, it has been difficult to get NHS

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EDP: ‘Something has to change’ – Southwold mental health activist Sarah Barrett speaks out after she was hospitalised 206 miles away from home

No wonder the Eastern Daily Press has been shortlisted for a mental health journalism award. Andrew Papworth reports: A teenage mental health patient sent to hospital 206 miles away from home while recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after a violent assault has said: “We must campaign for local hospitals.” Sarah Barrett was 16 and studying

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Guardian: NHS child mental health services are failing the next generation, say GPs

Denis Campbell of the Guardian reports: Pulse’s figures, obtained under freedom of information legislation from 15 mental health trusts, showed that 61% of children and young people referred for help from CAMHS in 2015 received no treatment. A third were not even assessed for it. Only 20% of under-18s referred to Norfolk and Suffolk NHS

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Pulse: Why do 60% of GP child mental health referrals end with no treatment?

Caroline Price of Pulse reports: A whole generation of children is being failed by mental health services, say GPs who struggle to access specialist help for their patients. Seven out of the 15 trusts showed marked reductions. For example, at Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust the proportion treated fell from 42% to 26%,

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Pulse: Two-thirds of GP referrals for child mental health lead to no treatment

Caroline Price of Pulse reports: Figures obtained from 15 mental health trusts reveal that 60% of GP referrals to child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) lead to no treatment and a third are not even assessed. The situation for young people with mental health issues appears to be worsening, with the numbers of referrals

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EADT: Death of Harriet Philo Powell highlighted ‘weaknesses’ in mental health care

Will Lodge of the East Anglian Daily Times reports: The death of an aspiring art student from the Essex/Suffolk border highlighted “systemic failings” and “weaknesses” in the Suffolk mental health trust, her family told an inquest. Hannah Noyce, who represented Miss Philo Powell’s parents at the inquest, told the court there were apparent “systemic failings”,

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EADT: Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Trust could lose medical training deal with University of East Anglia

Andrew Hirst of the East Anglian Daily Times reports: Suffolk’s mental health trust risks financial losses and reputational damage because of its poor performance training medical students. Directors discussing the programme at last week’s board meeting were told the University of East Anglia (UEA) had proposed to remove its students from the trust because of

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The Daily Gazette and Essex County Standard: UPDATED: Popular… student… should have been followed up by Wellbeing Service

Katherine Palmer of The Daily Gazette and Essex County Standard reports: A TEENAGER… should have been followed up by a mental health wellbeing service, an inquest has heard. Harriet Philo-Powell died suddenly aged 18 at the end of February. She had referred herself to a wellbeing service at the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust

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

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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An NSFT Mother and Carer responds to the tragic death of Henry Curtis-Williams

A mother and carer responds to the tragic death of Henry Curtis-Williams: “Again another young person has died when he should have been protected from the dangers of mental illness. Assessed by a psychiatrist as needing no clinical care and released the next day without medication, Henry Curtis-Williams died and his mother and father have been

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Daily Mail: Parents whose fashion student son, 21, died five days after being released from a mental health unit say police failed to tell them when they found him ‘staring over the side of a bridge’

Keiligh Baker of the Daily Mail reports: The parents of a student who took his own life just five days after being released from a psychiatric unit are ‘distraught’ that police and health staff failed to alert them to his mental state. Henry Curtis-Williams was detained by police under the Mental Health Act after he was

Daily Mail: Parents whose fashion student son, 21, died five days after being released from a mental health unit say police failed to tell them when they found him ‘staring over the side of a bridge’ Read More »

Kept in the Dark: Daily Gazette: ‘inquest… to be adjourned after finding out the professions of two NHS workers were not as they had understood.”

The Daily Gazette and Essex County Standard reports: AN inquest into the sudden death of a teenager has been adjourned as new information has come to light. Harriet Philo-Powell died suddenly aged 18 at the end of February. Miss Philo-Powell’s family, who live in Bulmer, near Halstead, asked for the inquest into her death to

Kept in the Dark: Daily Gazette: ‘inquest… to be adjourned after finding out the professions of two NHS workers were not as they had understood.” Read More »

EDP: We’re at a turning point, says Norfolk and Suffolk mental health chief

David Powles of the Eastern Daily Press reports: Michael Scott, Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust chief executive, pledged at yesterday’s AGM it had learned from its mistakes and promised that high quality, safe services would become ‘the norm not the exception’. However, his promises have been met with apprehension from mental health campaigners, who say

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EADT: Why are mental health problems rising in Suffolk?

In a major new piece of investigative journalism, David Powles of Archant reports: Huge increases in the number of children in Suffolk suffering from mental health problems were today laid bare – amid major concerns about the quality of services youngsters receive. Today, concerns were raised that help and support for children in Suffolk is

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New Ways of Shirking: NSFT Director of Research wanted, no PhD or substantial publications required = £150,000 per year

Last year, members of our campaign witnessed an embarrassing presentation to the Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) Board of Directors meeting at Swaffham during which the NSFT Deputy Medical Director with responsibility for research asked for money to ‘pump-prime’ NSFT’s research programmes. An NSFT Governor and member of our campaign asked how NSFT could

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BBC News: More than 800 Norfolk mental health patients ‘unallocated’

Nic Rigby of the BBC reports: More than 800 vulnerable mental health patients in Norfolk have not been assigned care workers due to staffing shortages, a report has revealed. The 839 unallocated cases at Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust include 139 youth team cases. Unison said services at the trust had been “savagely cut”.

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22nd Day of Lent: Going without… family life and school

Elizabeth writes: “I live with my parents and younger brother in rural Norfolk. During the summer last year, my older brother, who is under the care of the Youth Team came back to live with us, following problems with his land-lady. During early December, we had to call the police out, and then, in mid-December,

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