Culture of Drugs and Neglect On Ward
Mistreatment of its Garden Centre Workers isnt the only thing the Surrey & Borders Partnership Trust seems to be hitting the headlines over recently as this story , flagged up by a regular contributor in the comments section, comes from the Woking New & Mail
SHAME OF OUR MENTAL HEALTH UNIT
18/01/2007
By ROB BROWN
THE mentally ill are abusing cocaine and alcohol in a psychiatric unit serving Woking, a former patient claimed this week.
Contrary to policy at Chertsey’s Abraham Cowley Unit, staff leave patients unattended for days and fail to search them as they enter, the patient said.
The woman, who spent six days at the unit in October and asked to be identified only as Sarah, said patients snorted lines of cocaine in their beds and boasted of possessing cannabis and vodka during her stay on the unit’s Blake Ward.
“I was horrified,” said Sarah, who lives in Woking. “There was a young lad in there in his early 20s who was going out for an hour’s leave every day and was bringing back a litre of vodka and coke.
“One guy I was talking to said he had cocaine and cannabis. Apparently he and his friend did a line of cocaine each in their dorm in Blake Ward.”
Cocaine, cannabis and alcohol are all known to exacerbate schizophrenia and depression — conditions commonly treated at the unit. Sarah, who suffers from depression, was admitted after she took an overdose — her third attempt on her life — in October.
She said: “I went in from A and E at a weekend and I was in a terrible state. I felt that I had just been dumped there. I hardly saw any staff. No one searched my bags, I could have had anything with me, sharp objects — anything. Even though I was told at A and E I would be looked after I was just dumped there until the weekend was over.”
Sarah said patients were left to their own devices and staff rarely strayed from their office to attend to them. “It was disgusting,” she said. “A girl in my dorm told me she was going to drink a bottle of vodka and overdose she was so distraught. She lay in her bed for two days and nobody checked on her.
“It’s totally inhumane. All they do is dope them up on drugs. They treat them like animals. The staff spent most of their time just sitting in the office talking to each other. How can they write up notes when they have no interaction with their patients?”
Sarah’s husband visited her at the unit every day she was there and said he too was horrified by what he saw. He said: “The patients were drinking and taking drugs. I talked to some of the other patients and they said it was nice to sit down and talk to someone.
“When I was there, X Factor was on the TV and all the staff came out of their office and started watching it but they didn’t talk to any of their patients. I couldn’t believe it.” Sarah and her husband contacted the News and Mail after they read our report last week about the death of schizophrenic John Hughes at the hospital in July 2005.
At his inquest, Surrey coroner Michael Burgess raised concerns over the level of care provided at the unit at weekends. Matron Audrey Keats said new policies governing the recording of health checks on patients had been implemented since Mr Hughes’s death.
Chief executive of Surrey and Borders Partnership Trust Fiona Edwards extended her sympathy to Mr Hughes’s family on Monday, a week after the inquest. She said since his death, “the trust has carried out a thorough review of the way his care was delivered and changes have been made based on the lessons learnt from this tragic incident.”
Following the fresh accusations of negligence at the Abraham Cowley Unit, a spokesman said the trust was “extremely concerned”. He said the trust has a “clearly expressed policy of zero tolerance” towards illegal drugs and alcohol and the allegations would be “thoroughly” investigated.
- Have you experienced life in the Abraham Cowley Unit? Call the newsdesk on 01483 755755 or email newsandmail@woking.co.uk
posted by simply human @ 5:02 pm
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"The Trust has carried out a thorough review".
I think that is a line that all CEO's quote.
After 2 deaths of MH patients while under the care of the Beds and Luton Partnership Trust the Trust members said pretty much the same thing to the PPIF. Only they are still officially in the investigative process and therefore not sharing what they find with the PPIF. Funny that they said that they had already devised learning tools from the experiences at the same meeting. Contradiction or what?
Either you have to be dumb or not give a stuff to realise that what is being said by these people accounts to nothing.
Got that one wrong...
You have to be dumb or not give a stuff not to clock when the mouths are open but the words mean nothing.
DOH! Time for me jab.
Dont worry Mand, we get the gist. Its Fiona who needs the jab.
Looks like the partying the Trust and SCMH & MCCH bods got up to over christmas has had an impact on the wards.
Jill , if you want , try asking for the Serious Untoward Incident figures from the SABP Trust over the last few years - also try going to the website of the relevant Strategic Health Authority if you want to see the SUI combined figures for the region too
I have just sent this to Diane Woods the service manager of the PCT who seems to be dealing with the Richmond Fellowship and MCCH Ltd contracts. She was helpful when I did speak to her on the phone in October but now doesn't seem to want to reply to anything:
Dear Diane Woods, Service Manager, East Surrey PCT
I refer you to my mail below which was sent back in October. The only reply from you I have received is a blank 32 page contract in the postal mail which I guessed was the contract awarded to the Richmond Fellowship. I have not received any answer to my freedom of information act questions in the mail below. I am supposed to receive a reply to such questions in 20 days and so the answers are now very late indeed.
I telephoned you the week before last and had to leave a message on your answephone but you have not replied to that either.
I am now concerned that our campaign has not received a copy of the MCCH Ltd report which was due out in December and which you told me on the phone in October I could obtain as soon as it became available. I also wanted to know what opportunities there would be for further consultation concerning the best plans for the Old Moat garden centre before any contract is awarded?
Please can you answer my FOIA questions below, send me a copy of the MCCH report and gives me the details I have requested without further delay.
Yours Sincerely
Jill Goble
To Diane Woods, Service Manager, East Surrey PCT.
Dear Diane Woods,
Referring to the telephone conversation I had with you on Friday October 20th I am writing to confirm the following details.
First that you told me there is currently no contract with MCCH Ltd to run The Old Moat Garden Centre but that they are doing a report on the options for this centre which will be with you in about a month. You agreed that I could obtain a copy of this report from you when it becomes available. I would also like to know what will happen once the report becomes available and what measures will be taken to ensure that there is sufficient consultation with services users, carers and other concerned parties before any contract is awarded? Will it be possible to make any representations concerning alternative options for the Garden Centre as we have already done to Ms Fiona Edwards, Chief Executive of Surrey and Borders Partnership Trust, who currently run the centre? Where and to whom can we make these representations and what group of staff will be responsible for ultimately awarding the contract? Will the option to keep the Old Moat , as an NHS service, which could be managed and run by service users themselves, be considered?
Secondly I confirm that you told me that The Richmond Fellowship have already been awarded a 5 year contract to run the other work schemes in the current Priority Enterprises although Queens Park, Craft and Art Matters and Assembly Matters will not transfer over to them until next year. You said that as a Freedom of Information Request you will email me a copy of the contract with the sensitive information taken out and that it is based on the Task Force/3rd Sector Model Document designed by the Department of Health. You said that the £3 a day payments to the workers which Ms Fiona Edwards at SABP has recently agreed to reinstate will not be continued by the Richmond Fellowship and that it is argued these are discriminatory and against the minimum wage act in themselves. My argument is that the contract with the Richmond Fellowship is not in the best interests of the disabled service users because it does not create any new job opportunities which pay at least the minimum wage or above and expects them to work as unpaid labour as volunteers in the kind of work non disabled people would not be expected to do for free. But because the Richmond Fellowship are a charity there are few rules to prevent long hours spent volunteering and the following guide from the government also supports the view that these schemes are exploitative :
From 'You can work it out. Best practice in employment for people with a learning difficulty' :
As services seek to help people find more meaningful activities than sitting around in day centres, employment is acknowledged as playing a crucial role in people's lives. But success in getting people in to paid work remains woefully inadequate. Instead, services have created a world based on work for which few people get paid. There is a growing variety of training, social enterprises, work-related projects, work experience and volunteering schemes. There are people who to all intents and purposes are working, but who receive little or no payment.
This is illegal unless there is genuinely no obligation to attend and no obligation to do anything.
There are people who are described as volunteering- this conveniently gets around the issue of employment contracts and payments. These situations are exploitative.'
This guide can be found at:
www.valuingpeople.gov.uk/EmploymentGuides.htm
There are many other reasons why our campaign does not think that the contract with the Richmond Fellowship is in the best interests of the disabled service users and our objections can be found in detail on the campaign site at http://justice4sabtworkers.blogspot.com/
Thirdly I quoted to you part of a document by Helen Lockett written in May 2006 which confirms that the contract with Richmond Fellowship would go ahead and that:
'The implementation and continued operation of these new services will be monitored through the performance framework by the PCT Commissioning Manager and through the Work Services Operational Group (WSOG) which reports to the Local Implementation Team'.
You confirmed that Emmanuel Gbetuwa Mental Health Commissioning Manager is on the WSOG group which is made up of people from each of the providers but you did not say if the reports that they make are public? I am still confused about how the new contract with the Richmond Fellowship is going to be monitored and hope you can give me more detailed information about how we can be kept informed about this and how we can make representations we consider necessary concerning the implementation and monitoring of the contract?
Fourthly we are concerned by a project on the Richmond Fellowship website which they run in Swindon .. This states that they are running out of funding and will have to cut back the project unless they find alternative providers. Are the services in Surrey also in danger of this happening? Can you please give me detailed information about the funding arrangements for the Richmond Fellowship regarding these new contracts as well as the amounts Surrey will be paying both to commission the services and to place service users in the projects once they are running?
Finally we are wondering about the role of Surrey County Council in the externatisation of these services. The contracts officer I spoke to at Surrey County Council told me that they currently do not want to take over the contract with the Richmond Fellowship from the Primary Care Trust.
Please can you treat all my questions as Freedom of Information Act enquiries and can I also thank you for your response to my phone call on Friday which gave us some clear information which previously we had found it very difficult to obtain despite all our enquiries and FOIA requests to Surrey and Borders NHS Partnership Trust and others including MCCH Ltd.
Yours Sincerely
Jill Goble
http://justice4sabtworkers.blogspot.com/
I can also be contected on Jill@goblej.freeserve.co.uk
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