Thank you very much once again for signing this petition.
N.A. was allowed to visit her home after 11 months of continuous hospitalisation. It is now a total of 18 months that she has been enforced hospitalisation (with the previous hospitalisation).
Fortunately the situation is changing and now professionals started discussing a discharge plan and luckily to home however it is shocking that now that she turned 18 years old she is entering the waiting list of adults and it will take 18 months to 2 years to see a psychologist in the community after discharge!
It seems that after 16 months on the waiting list of CAMHS she will now be entering a new waiting list for adults like the previous waiting list and the hospitalisation and what the law states for people who are detained under the Mental Health Act and the Section 117 after care in the community do not matter! We were told that she has to stay in hospital until the community care is organised. It seems that we are back where we were (a whole year ago) when she first was discharged from the first hospital though at least now there is a care coordinator to see her in the community.
We were also told that she does not meet the threshold for adult social care so a Care Act 2014 assessment will not be carried out and there will be no social worker allocated from adult social services.
Our only hope is an Education Healthcare Plan which at least will give her the opportunity to receive education and she already applied to a college that she really wants to go which provides a therapeutic educational programme. This is what we are praying for.
There was a lot in the media recently about detained children and the Children's Commissioner reported this May that 1465 children were detained in March 2018 of which 505 were in mental health hospitals. You can access the report here:
https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cco-who-are-they-where-are-they-may-2019.pdf
It is stated that Psychiatric Intensive Care Units (PICU) should be used for no more than 8 weeks at a time for those experiencing short term behavioural disturbance or for those being assessed before moving to a long-term unit or returning home and N.A. was kept in the PICU in Manchester for over 5 months before moving to a low secure unit.
It is also stated that the NHS reference figures for costs suggest that a Medium Secure bed costs £1,611 a day, a Low secure bed costs £1,308 a day and a PICU bed costs £1,327 a day. With these figures you can wonder why there is no money in the community services whereas private hospitals that are paid by NHS to lock up children and drug them make a fortune (together with the pharmaceutical companies!).
Thank you all for your support.