BBC News | UK | Care in the community to be scrapped (original) (raw)

Saturday, January 17, 1998 Published at 15:49 GMT



UK

Care in the community to be scrapped

No return to the old asylums, say ministers

The controversial policy of releasing mentally ill people from hospitals is to be scrapped by the Government.

The Health Secretary, Frank Dobson, said the care in the community programme launched by the Conservatives in 1990 had failed.

In a newspaper interview, he said that seriously disturbed psychiatric patients must be kept in secure units to protect the public.

The Health Secretary said this will mean recalling some patients, currently living in unsupervised units, back into residential care.

Pressure for change has been growing following a number of high-profile cases.

One of the most famous was the murder of Jonathan Zito, who was stabbed to death by schizophrenic Christopher Clunis in 1992.

24 hour care

The government is carrying out a review of mental health care. New legislation is expected to be published later this year.

Mr Dobson said proposals will then be drawn up to build new homes or convert old buildings into care centres for psychiatric patients.

He said that old-style large mental hospitals were not an option.

Who will pay?

"It would be better if they had people living in much smaller, more homely places but still getting the 24-hour-a-day back-up to help them cope.

"Quite clearly there are some people not capable of living in their own flat," he said.

The Health Secretary admitted that a return to residential care would be expensive.

"I don't think it is going to be so low that you could do it with a whip-round," he said.

No asylums

The Junior Health Minister, Paul Boateng, is supervising the review of mental health care.

"There will be no return to the grim Victorian asylums. But the old mantra, `community good, hospital bad' is dead," he said.

"We have got to build a new basis of confidence in our mental health services. The public is entitled to nothing less.

"This means making sure that every existing mental health hospital closure is backed up by a tough and credible alternative package which includes a mix of new style hospital care and community provision," he said.

Marjorie Wallace, the chief executive of mental health charity Sane, welcomed the move, but she said that any policy change would need a huge injection of resources.
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