In-patient Mental Health Services (Children and Adolescents)

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. He is talking about the closure of adult in-patient services, which had to move from Goole to Hull. The irony is that in-patient mental health facilities for adults exist in Hull. Providing care close to home is important for adults, but surely it is even more important for six, seven and eight-year-old children. The further away they are from their parents, the more their mental health situation is likely to deteriorate.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this important debate. I want to raise the case of a constituent of mine whose daughter is having treatment on the other side of Manchester, 115 miles away from their home in Hull. He has not been able to see his daughter for three weeks because of the financial implications of having to travel so far. He is distraught about not being able to give the emotional support that his daughter needs at this time. Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that that is totally unacceptable when we are dealing with the mental health issues of young people?

[Alan Johnson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She has been fighting a battle about the West End unit. It started with one constituent, but we now know that up to 13 have been affected in that way, one of whom she has mentioned.

In medical care we often talk of the need to concentrate operations in fewer locations in order to maximise expertise, but that is not a relevant argument for child and adolescent mental health. In the case of my constituent’s 13-year-old daughter, for instance, the specialist consultant had to travel from Hull to Cheadle to see his patient. It cost the NHS £1,000 a day to provide that appalling service, but that is without the cost of the consultant having to travel to see his patient.

One case of this nature in Hull would be bad enough, but there have been 13 such cases, and probably more, since we lost in-patient services. Youngsters from Hull and the East Riding have been sent to Manchester, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) mentioned, and Northampton as well as to Leeds and Cheadle. That is worsening the condition of the children concerned.

Trying to address the problem in the newly reorganised NHS bequeathed to us by the right hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) is a nightmare. NHS England is responsible for in-patient care, clinical commissioning groups are responsible for out-patient services, local authorities are responsible for public health and the Humber NHS Foundation Trust, the provider, says that it is absolutely powerless in the matter. I have been told by the director of commissioning that, if a proper in-patient service were offered to the mental health trust in Hull and the East Riding, it would have to decline the commission because the tariff is so low. I wonder whether the Minister can comment on that.

The service is removed by NHS England without consultation because it is available for only five nights a week. The CCG then tries retrospectively to justify the closure, saying that it is underused, and we will hear more about that from the Minister—I tell him that there is gaming going on to try retrospectively to justify something that it cannot justify on an intellectual basis. The mental health trust says that it cannot operate it anyway because the tariff is too low.

The public in Hull want the in-patient facility restored. A local business man has even offered the use of Elloughton castle in east Yorkshire as a location for in-patient care, but he can find nobody in the NHS prepared to talk to him—I know how he feels. Only the Department of Health can sort of this mess by ordering the re-provision of in-patient units, including at West End.

The Minister should also reinstate the child and adolescent national psychiatric morbidity survey to begin to address the lack of meaningful data since its cessation. I am pleased that the adult version has been restored, but the child and adolescent version has not. Above all, he needs to address the problem of diminishing funding for mental health.

I hope that the Minister will meet me and my constituent whose daughter has received such appalling treatment in order to begin a proper dialogue about the closures with those who have been genuinely affected. Only then can we begin to say that we are addressing the institutional bias against mental health in this country, which he and I both know exists and both want to eradicate.