Concern raised by campaigners over mental health service 'cuts'
NINETEEN beds for the mentally ill have been axed since the NHS Kent and Medway Partnership Trust was formed six years ago, says the Canterbury and Whitstable Stop the Cuts action group.
But since the NHS's Crisis Resolution Home Treatment Team was set up in the same year the number of hospital admissions in Canterbury and Swale has risen from 281 to 297 a year.
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NEW HOSPITAL: But fewer beds; an artist's impression of revamped St Martin's Hospital, Canterbury, due to open later this year
The number of patients admitted to wards outside their normal area rose from 38 to 87.
Stop the Cuts spokesman Mary Sullivan warned: "When a person is at his or her lowest emotional ebb they are being pushed from pillar to post at a time when they most need stability and support.
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"These cuts to mental health provision are a concern to service users, relatives and staff.
"Although there has been some improvement in community care with the Crisis Resolution Home Treatment Service – which is supposed to reduce admissions to hospital – admissions continue to increase when beds are being cut.
"The NHS and Social Care Trust should provide adequate care in and out of hospital. The cuts are undermining an essential service and must not go ahead."
NHS spokesman Sophie Lyon confirmed mental health centres Durham House in Herne Bay and Laurel House in Canterbury are to close but stressed the number of staff will not be cut.
She said: "Mobile working will mean staff spend more time with service users in the community and may lead to patients seeing mental health staff in existing health centres.
She added: "We wish to make it clear we are not looking at reducing mental health services in the Canterbury district in any way whatsoever. This remains a work in progress.
"As soon as we have identified the options open to us we will present these to service users to get their feedback. We do not expect to make changes before the end of the year."
A new adult inpatient unit at St Martin's Hospital, Canterbury, due to open in the autumn, will be used by patients from east Kent. Service users in Swale will be consulted about the future of their psychiatric intensive care in the next few months.
The trust is carrying out a public consultation into the care of adults over 65 with mental health problems.
It is expected to treat more of these in the community.
Keith Woods, also from Stop the Cuts, said: "If we think the cuts will be unacceptable we will launch petitions to help fight them and may organise a march for mental health.
"A lot of service users need encouragement to come forward and the Stop the Cuts Group is just the group to do it."
For details call Keith Woods on 07987 173049. For the public consultation see www.kmpt.nhs.uk/ opmhconsultation
Comments
by GenBourne
Sunday, June 10 2012, 7:48AM
“It's good to learn that Kent continues to be committed to helping people with mental illness to the extent that this article suggests. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, I've long been appalled at the abject condition of mentally ill people who were shut out of state-supported professional care facilities when Ronald Reagan became governor of California on the theory that local communities could take care of them. With the collapse of both national and local economies since that time, the mentally ill are more and more obliged to eke out an existence on the streets, their mental conditions worsening with every passing year and many dying during cold snaps. I pray that English society never become so heartless and cruel.”