The system is failing and these people deserved so much better
People called on them for help at their lowest points, when even their own minds had betrayed them.
One beleaguered unit became ‘its own world’, with its own ‘combative’ set of rules flourishing as it was cut off from outside influence. Meanwhile, trust leaders began to ‘believe their own propaganda’ as they were showered in false praise - and nothing changed.Humiliation, verbal abuse and assault Right now, GMMH is subject to a slew of investigations. Police, independent, internal - many of them stem from the revelations aired in a September episode of Panorama.
Board members, including chief executive Neil Thwaite, hung their heads as they appeared bewildered and ashamed by the shocking findings, which appeared to come as a surprise to some. “The poor physical environment and low staffing levels became normalised and accepted as ‘just the way things were,” he added.
Leaders came to rely on 'temporary fixes' and failed to solve their staffing problems, putting even more pressure on those clinicians left trying to care for patients. While staffing levels dwindled to ‘lower than acceptable standards’, it was the people struggling with their mental health who were left in limbo. They had reached out to ask for help - but in some cases the results were disastrous.
Though he had regular appointments with the doctor, Bennett-Eko was a young man with a learning disability without the words to articulate the nature of his illness. Immediately after the trial in 2020, when asked to define what moments in this timeline they had specifically investigated, the trust declined - which became a pattern in the Manchester Evening News' attempts to investigate what and how 'lessons will be learned' from the Radcliffe horror. Trust bosses told the Manchester Evening News that 'an action plan' has been put in place to 'prevent any similar incidents in the future'.
On March 22, 2020, she snatched Emily from her scooter in Queens Park, Bolton, and fatally slashed her neck with a craft knife. "She was like a ticking time bomb - if it wasn't Emily it would have been somebody else," Emily's father, Mark Jones, told the M.E.N. In a six-day inquest held at Rochdale Coroners Court, jurors heard that Rowan Thompson had 'severely low' levels of potassium before their death. The jury was told of old out-of-service phone numbers and email address that meant blood tests were not communicated properly and about staff who ‘made up’ details of observations.Ania Sohail ordered medication from four different websites and had it delivered to her family's home, Rochdale Coroners' Court heard.
In January of this year, Charlie’s inquest was delayed for police to carry out further investigations - after it emerged hospital records may have been ‘altered’ after his death. Gill Green, Director of Nursing and Governance, responded by welcoming the findings, accepting there were areas for improvement ‘such as levels of qualified staff on wards, which many NHS trusts are struggling with, however we have strong contingency plans in place to ensure we remain safely staffed’.
“The local commissioners regularly monitored standards for adult forensic services [which provide treatment, rehabilitation and aftercare for people who are mentally unwell and who are in the criminal justice system] but this did not flag exceptional concerns at Edenfield. Making the situation worse, a workforce report on the mental health sector penned by the British Medical Association in September 2020 found that demand for services nationally had been rising before the pandemic - between 2016-2019 there was a 21 percent increase in people who contacted the NHS for help - but staffing levels had not been keeping up.
One senior member of staff told the M.E.N. that 'barely any' of the various community teams in the region boasted a full complement of nurses. She believed this meant that there were hundreds of people who had approached their GP and been assessed for care but were now stuck in limbo awaiting treatment.
In total, there were 428 patients waiting for assessment, 221 patients waiting for treatment across the two teams and more than 260 patients without a care coordinator - someone to plan and be in charge of their treatment. “There was a long-standing drive for continuous growth and expansion which were considered totems of the trust’s success."
“The issues should not be surprising given the speed the trust had grown and the expectations placed on the leadership to sort out complex, long-standing issues in Greater Manchester. Just this week, another area of GMMH registered a complaint about staffing problems. Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services in Wigan were taken over by the trust back in 2021.
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