In her deputation statement to the Calderdale & Kirklees Joint Health Scrutiny Committee yesterday, the Chair of Calderdale 38 Degrees NHS Campaign warned of the risk that the plan to move many services out of the hospitals into the “community” would repeat the the disastrous Care in the Community scheme of the 1980s/90s, that resulted from the closure of mental health hospitals.

Jane Rendle told Councillors:

“Once the hospitals had closed, funding for mental health Care in the Community was whittled away, leading to inadequate care and no hospital back up. Today we have the disastrous situation that sometimes there is not a single available mental health bed in the country.”

Now, history is repeating itself.  Clinical Commissioning Groups are pushing the un-evidenced “Care Closer to Home scheme” – while effective and cost-efficient community mental health services are for the chop. Users of an NHS community-based Art Psychotherapy service in Calderdale are fighting to save it from closure after the therapists were given compulsory redundancy notices over the Christmas period.

And increasingly, mental health services are being privatised. Continue reading →