Mental health services 'overflowing' due to bed cuts, claims New Forest MP

MENTAL health services in the New Forest are “rammed and overflowing” due to the closure of beds seven years ago, a local MP has claimed.

Dr Lewis, of New Forest East, spoke out during a Westminster debate to recall his failed campaign in 2012 to stop the axing of 24 beds at the Woodhaven unit at Tatchbury Mount, near Totton.

Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust shut the facility as it cut bed numbers across the region to save £4.4m and reinvest £1.5m into what it called “hospital at home” services.

Dr Lewis told MPs: “I remember, in the New Forest area, having to fight a bitter campaign – which ultimately failed – to prevent a 35% reduction in in-patient beds in acute units. If I remember correctly, two of five units were closed.

“We were prepared to compromise and say, ‘Close one of the two units. Close 16 of the beds, rather than 32, and see how you get on,’ but the authorities would not listen and they forced the closures through.

“It was the Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, which later became notorious in the mental health sphere for other reasons, that forced through the closure of all these beds, and the system has been rammed and overflowing, and under excessive pressure, ever since.”

As reported in the A&T, Southern Health has since gone through fierce criticism of the way it looked after patients following several avoidable deaths, and is currently rated “requires improvement” by the Care Quality Commission.

In 2016 chief executive Katrina Percy resigned and last year year it was fined £2m in a prosecution by the Health and Safety Executive, including the case of Emery Down woman Teresa Colvin who died at Woodhaven from a ligature incident.

Southern Health’s clinical director south-west Hampshire, Dr Rachel Anderson, admitted that the county was “struggling” although she said it was “difficult to measure” the impact of Woodhaven’s closure.

She revealed to the A&T that the trust was actually looking at increasing the number of adult mental health beds among measures to improve services, including reopening Woodhaven later this year as a £7m specialist unit for young people with mental health problems.

Dr Anderson said: “However, it is important to be clear that beds are not the only solution to this challenge and we are working across a number of areas.

“For example, we are now providing more alternatives to hospital admission, such as the Crisis Lounge in Southampton, improving mental health in-reach into acute hospitals and placing specialist mental health nurses into the local NHS 111 call centre.

“We are also bidding for national funding to further improve mental health services.”

Woodhaven’s closure in 2012 was part of a wider reduction of mental health beds in Hampshire from 165 to 117, with inpatient care focussed at Southampton, Winchester, Basingstoke and Havant.

It included axing the eight-bed Copper Beeches rehabilitation unit in New Milton.

The plans sparked protests and warnings by relatives of patients being further away from homes and shortages of beds for potentially suicidal people.