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Friday 21st October, 2005

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HEALTH By MARK BLUNDEN

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Hewitt pulls plug on ‘horrible’ health unit

Mental health centre ‘makes patients feel human’

Erville Millar and Patricia Hewitt

HEALTH Secretary Patricia Hewitt said she was “simply not familiar” with the Whittington Hospital fiasco that saw builders Jarvis go bust and stall a £30 million construction programme.
The MP made the comments on Tuesday after opening the Highgate Mental Health Centre, in Dartmouth Park Hill, Archway.
The centre replaces the old Waterlow Unit, which one mental health patient described as “horrible”.
Mrs Hewitt welled up with tears as she heard the story of Peter Jones, who had been sectioned five times at the old unit. She said: “I can certainly see what you had to struggle with in the past.”
Mrs Hewitt defended Camden and Islington Mental and Social Care Trust after Rodney Anyanwu, a sufferer of paranoid schizophrenia, was allowed to roam free and kill a great grandmother Violetta Vella.
The trust is currently under investigation by the North London Strategic Health Authority over Anyanwu’s treatment by an Assertive Outreach Team.
Mrs Hewitt said: “I’m not going to comment on that or other individual cases but what I do know is the trust and their staff take enormous care to avoid appalling tragedies like that and where something goes wrong they do everything possible to learn lessons from it.”
Erville Millar, the trust’s chief executive, said: “Homicides committed by people who have had contact with mental health services are very rare but very tragic nevertheless.
“There has been an internal inquiry into that particular case and an independent inquiry. We are waiting for that report and then we will be able to see what can be learned from these tragic circumstances.”
The new 136-bed unit in Dartmouth Park Hill is primarily an inpatient residential service. The trust says the preservation of “privacy and dignity” was paramount in the design brief.
Mr Jones, a 52 year-old manic depressive from Clerkenwell, is now a member of the Public-Patient Involvement team, which liaises between mental health service users and the trust.
He said: “The old Waterlow Unit was a horrible place to be sectioned into. The windows couldn’t be opened but still if you went there they saved your life.
“With this new centre you are taken off the streets, given your own room and somewhere you can have a shower.
“It makes you feel human again.”

Give power to the people

POST-war, early 1950s Britain was still experiencing food rationing and was a disillusioning place for English gourmands. The war had destroyed the restaurant trade and, with few exceptions, post-war eateries made the worst of a bad situation.
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