'People have lost their lives needlessly' campaign to save mental health services in Norfolk and Suffolk will be taken to Parliament
Campaigners from Norfolk are taking the fight for mental health services to parliament and point out that "failings" have "caused people to lose their lives".
Next Tuesday, July 5, mental health campaigners from Norfolk and Suffolk are taking their fight for mental health services to Parliament.
They will be meeting MPs to demand an independent statutory public inquiry into the deaths crisis and four failed Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspections in the areas.
Mark Harrison a campaign spokesperson said:“We are taking our call for an independent statutory public inquiry to Parliament to get our Norfolk and Suffolk MPs to support us so that we can establish how many people have lost their lives and why the wider system has failed the citizens of Norfolk and Suffolk by allowing this unsafe situation (four failed CQC inspections) to go on for so many years.
"We want to understand the scale of the problem and the root of it so the same mistakes don’t continue to be made and more lives are not needlessly lost. We are also demanding the Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust(NSFT) be placed in special administration and replaced with a well-funded and functioning mental health organisation”.
Campaigners travelling to London will be gathering at Norwich railway station at 9am where they will hold a rally before boarding the 9.32am train. Other campaigners will be joining the train at Diss and Ipswich.
A protest will also be held at Parliament, meeting outside Portcullis House at 12pm, before a meeting with Norfolk and Suffolk MPs at 1pm.
The organisation, called Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk, claims there is "evidence of a cover up and bullying" within the NSFT.
Campaigners say: "The campaign has evidence that services have further deteriorated since the CQC inspection towards the end of 2021. Current concerns include:NSFT are either unable or unwilling to confirm how many people have died unnecessary and unexplained deaths.
"Information from the four Prevention of Future Deaths (PFD) reports issues this year evidence a ‘cover-up’ and ‘bullying’ culture not a learning culture prevails at NSFT.
"We are seeing repeated mistakes in reports of deaths but no learning embedded in changed practices and procedures.
"It is now 2 months since NSFT were issued with an enforcement notice by the CQC and 28 days to come up with a plan. If such a plan was made, the public, frontline staff, and service-users are unaware of it.
"To ensure same mistakes are not repeated, we want to know - what will be different?
"Information given to our campaign from patients, service users, staff, and carers corroborates the concerns in the CQC report and recent PFDs that inpatient wards remain unsafe.
"The staffing crisis means that wards are not safe or remain closed or functioning below capacity. Some wards do not have appropriate clinical supervision.
"Lack of beds in Norfolk and Suffolk mean the patients are still being sent hundreds of miles from home in acute mental distress and others remain ‘parked’ at home waiting for a bed to come available.
"Those responsible for monitoring and commissioning NSFT are complicit in allowing NSFT to ‘mark their own homework’ with regard to deaths and serious incidents. Therefore, we have no faith in them."
