The NHS faces unrealistic expectations, says; Michele Moran
Michele Moran, chief executive of Manchester mental health and social care trust, says adapting resources to deliver services for vulnerable people is her biggest challenge
YOUNG people in Hull are falling victim to the Government’s failure to provide sufficient in-patient mental health services in Hull, says MP Alan Johnson.
Mental health patient admissions to A&E set to reach record levels
The number of people with a mental health condition admitted to hospital as an emergency is likely to reach its highest level ever this winter, a former health minister has warned.
An estimated 280,000 mental health patients will be admitted to hospital as an emergency in the last three months of 2014, latest analysis suggests as emergency doctors warned that overstretched A&E departments are the wrong place for people in mental distress.
Those of us who have been campaigning over the last few years to save public services from government cuts and austerity have been known to say, only half jokingly, that when the Tories are done, there will be “nothing left”. But this isn’t true. Tory austerity measures are a full on ideological assault. Their economic policy masks a concerted attempt to demonise the poorest and encourage people to think that the unemployed, the ill, the disabled, immigrants, asylum seekers and the old aren’t “deserving”. Thus the future is not one without public services. It is one where minimal services are delivered, by privatised corporations, to those who are deemed worthy.
‘People are dying!’ Oldham MP’
Oldham MP Debbie Abrahams has sensationally accused the Government of contributing to the deaths of vulnerable people due to sanctioning benefit claims in order to improve figures.
The Oldham East and Saddleworth constituent publicly lambasted the secretary of state for work and pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, at a Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) Select Committee yesterday.
UK ‘sleepwalking’ towards crisis in children’s mental health, warns charity
Children’s mental health has got worse over the last year or ‘remained persistently bleak’, according to 90% of frontline professionals.
Parts of the country have no places of safety to assess vulnerable children suffering from a mental health crisis, forcing them to be locked in prison cells or police vans for hours at a time.
Maps revealing the mental health units and hospitals where people can be detained if police believe they are a danger to themselves or others because of a mental health problem show Norfolk, Hampshire and Devon have not one dedicated place of safety for children under 16.
UNISON has confirmed that its members working in the NHS in England will stage a four-hour stoppage between 7am and 11am on Monday 24 November.
Mental health spending in England too low, says Mind !
Local authorities in England spend an “unacceptably low” amount of money on public mental health, according to the charity Mind.
A report by the charity says on average just 1.4% of public health budgets is spent on mental health.
Public Health England welcomed the report and said there should be more investment at the local level.
The Local Government Association said councils did many positive things that the report had not recognised.
The mental health intermediate care centre, which was officially announced on Monday, would manage tenant’s mental health and provide help with integrating back into society.
However, MM has learned that many of the staff who would be needed to run the centre are set to lose their jobs in April, if proposed Salford Council budget cuts take effect.
The mental health floating support service which workers are employed in will be seeing a reduction in funding of £214,000 under the council budget cuts.
Steve North, branch secretary of Salford Unison, has been involved in the proposed centre’s planning and says the announcement is a ploy by Salford Council.
“On the face of it this looks like a really positive development,” North told MM.
