Legal News

A campaign by frontline mental health workers in Norfolk and Suffolk attracted standing room only crowds at its first meeting in Norwich on Monday evening (25/11/13).

Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) is aiming to reduce its budget by £40 million and the first meeting of the Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk was attended by hundreds of local people.

Early in November it was revealed that NSFT is sending acute care and specialised placement patients out of the area – and as far away as London for specialised placements. Many mental health patients in Norfolk and Suffolk also complained of long waiting lists for treatment – one patient said he was on an 18-month waiting list for cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), while others had to wait for four months for initial assessments and therapy for depression or anxiety.

The government is currently considering introducing more therapy-based treatments for some mental health conditions – and Labour Leader Ed Miliband has called for more counselling after revealing he underwent bereavement counselling after the death of his father Ralph Miliband and found it helpful.

However, NSFT is hoping to reduce the number of mental health inpatient beds by 20% by 2016, raising fears that patients needing acute care may not be able to access services near their home without being placed on a waiting list.

The campaigners are calling on the government and Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) to increase budgets for mental health services.

Unison spokesman for the NSFT branch, Emma Corlett, told Norwich Evening News online that they would be discussing the issues with North Norfolk MP and Health Minister Norman Lamb this week.

NSFT has denied any anomaly in mental health patient death rates in the area, compared with national averages.

However, between October 2012 and April 2013, a total of 58 “unexpected” deaths among mental health patients were reported to NSFT, compared with 88 unexpected deaths for the area in 2011-12.

In October, leading psychiatrist Dr Martin Baggaley – medical director at the Royal Maudsley Hospital in south London – said that England’s mental health services were “unsafe”.

Dr Baggaley was responding to an investigation by the BBC and Community Care magazine which found that in recent years more than 1,500 mental health beds had been lost. He told the BBC that one of his own patients had been transferred from Croydon to a unit in Hertfordshire because no beds in London were available. Dr Baggaley said he had 50 patients in acute care or specialised units outside London – some were placed as far away as Somerset.

Dr Baggaley told the BBC:

“We are in a real crisis at the moment – I think currently the system is inefficient, unsafe.

"We're certainly feeling it on the front line, it's very pressured, and we spend a lot of our time struggling to find beds, sending people across the country, which is really not what I want to do.”

Health Minister Norman Lamb said the situation was “unacceptable” and must improve.

Recently there have been several high-profile cases of mental health patients detained under Section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983 who have died in police custody. Under Section 136, mental health patients should preferably be taken for assessment to a mental health unit, but many are being held in custody in police stations after being detained.


Help with Mental Health Law

Duncan Lewis is one of the UK’s leading mental health solicitors and can advise on legal issues such as Section 136 and Section135 detentions – and the individual rights and liberties of mental health patients being detained.

Those detained under the Mental Health Act are eligible for free legal advice.

Contact Duncan Lewis mental health solicitors on 020 7923 4020 – or call the Duncan Lewis Mental Health Solicitors Helpline on 0203 114 1124.