The Whittington Hospital

• THE mental health unit on the Whittington Hospital site was always going to be a disaster.

Now its late completion has meant that people with serious mental health needs are being placed in private provision.

Let’s hope that those who have been moved into this rip-off provision, haven’t been moved too far from their families and loved ones and that their new hospitals provide good care.

This use of private health care is part of a plan of this current government to support private health care at our expense.

Everyone with mental health challenges should have their needs met within our National Health Service system, and not through supporting a profit-driven private system.

Defend the Whittington Hospital Coalition has long argued that the new mental health unit should never have been located on our precious hospital site.

The original location for this unit was in south Camden, so why move it further north and out of Camden, to a location next door to another mental health unit?

There were never enough beds in the previous arrangement. In 2011 the numbers of mental health beds were actually cut by 100, to fund the shortfall caused by reduced real-terms funding to mainstream NHS.

So we were appalled that the new provision was based on the same number of post 2011 mental health beds. Meanwhile mental health needs rise and rise, beds are reduced, and day care is almost non-existent.

Who is going to fight to get a decent mental health service, where staff are holistically trained, paid properly, and that is funded so that it meets the huge range of needs?

SHIRLEY FRANKLIN
JEM LINDON
VALERIE LIPMAN
MARTIN FRANKLIN