Claire Dyer is free
Today Claire Dyer and her family found out that she had been released from her sectioning under the Mental Health Act, and will not have to return to the medium-secure unit to which she...
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Claire Dyer and the LB Bill
On Friday 1st August, Claire Dyer's family lost their legal bid to stop her being transferred from an assessment and treatment unit in Swansea, where her family live, to a medium-secure unit near Brighton,...
Claire Dyer: Transfer postponed!
Update 30th July, 14:13: See this BBC news report – this may be on TV later, especially in Wales. Update 14:55: There is to be a court hearing this Friday; Claire will not be...
Claire Dyer update
Regarding the ongoing case of Claire Dyer, the 19-year-old autistic woman from Swansea who is being threatened with a transfer to a secure hospital in Northampton, which neither she nor her family wants: a...
Claire Dyer belongs with her family
Update 23rd January: the tribunal has been adjourned with no decision made; this is because more evidence is needed from the health board. Claire therefore remains under section and the threat of transfer to...
Putting the NHS on a pedestal
Last night, for the third Thursday night in a row, people came out of their front doors to clap in support of NHS workers and carers. For the first time, as far as I...
What ‘lessons’ will be learned from the Amy el-Keria case?
Yesterday the Priory Group, which owns a number of private mental-health units in the UK which treat patients on contracts from the NHS as well as their ‘flagship’ private unit in Roehampton, was fined...
A law unto themselves
The past few weeks I’ve been in contact with the mother of an autistic teenage girl who was admitted (initially informally) to an adolescent mental health unit last July. She had been bullied at...
Review: Dispatches, “Inside the Priory”
This documentary on Channel 4 last night (19th Feb) exposed abusive practices, short staff, over-reliance on temporary staff (including the undercover reporter for this programme) and poor safety at a hospital unit, The Dene...
Before you trust the Tories on mental health …
So, today it was announced that Theresa May has promised new legislation on mental health if her party wins next month's election, which will "rip up" the 1983 Mental Health Act under which people...
BADD 2017: On dignity
This post is part of Blogging Against Disablism Day 2017. For the past couple of years, my BADD posts have focussed on the issue of people with autism and learning disabilities and the way...
Big hospital or small unit, bad care is bad care
On Wednesday night, Channel 4 aired a Dispatches special, Under Lock and Key, which exposed the abuse and neglect of patients at St Andrew's hospital in Northampton, an enormous campus which started out as...
Why couldn’t Dean Saunders get a secure hospital place?
Last Friday an inquest jury gave its verdict in the case of Dean Saunders, who killed himself in Chelmsford Prison in January 2016 having been remanded there having injured his father who tried to...
BADD 2016: Break the silence
This post is part of Blogging Against Disablism Day 2016. Last month we saw the Seven Days of Action campaign, to highlight the cases of people with learning disabilities, mostly autism, who are being...
Another victim of the great British mental health misery-go-round
They first sent me to Windsor, and then to Stoke on Trent In a holding cell in Liverpool three days and nights I spent My solicitor can't find me and my family don't know...
Review: Kids in Crisis
Kids in Crisis was a programme about children with severe mental health problems in the UK who are being transferred a long way from home, sometimes hundreds of miles, because there is no inpatient...
So, Maisie’s home, but …
Last Sunday I mentioned that there was to be a "tweet storm" in support of the "Get Maisie Home" campaign, which was really about re-opening a children's mental health unit in Hull which was...
Sometimes it’s the miles. Sometimes it’s the care. Sometimes it’s both.
This post is part of Blogging Against Disablism Day 2015. Phill Wills, the father of Josh Wills, an autistic boy from Cornwall who has been in a hospital unit in Birmingham since 2012 and...
Review of 2014
Two big things happened in my life in 2014. The first was that my Grandad died, in January. He had been living with us since the previous November, and had been getting steadily weaker....
What’s missing from Bubb’s tepid report
This week the long-awaited report by Sir Stephen Bubb into the care of people with learning disabilities and autism following the scandal of Winterbourne View in 2011 was published. Titled "Winterbourne View: Time for...