Don’t be fooled by the “local” issue. It’s never too small to mention when families are hurt.

Your kidneys become infected and stop working properly.  Your doctor insists that you’re admitted for emergency treatment, but when you get to the hospital, you discover that because more men than women need kidney treatment right now, they have closed the renal ward to women. 

You are put into an ambulance and taken to a hospital in a town you’ve never been to before, about an hour’s drive from where you live.  When you get there, your condition is assessed and they admit you for six month’s treatment. 

You suddenly feel very scared.  You have two small children and your husband works full time.  How will they be able to come and visit you?  You realise you’re going separated from your close family for months and that your friends, family and colleagues will struggle to come and see you too.  You feel very alone and very isolated.

When you demand to be treated closer to home, you’re told no; only male patients can get treatment locally in your area, but that it is perfectly acceptable as there are beds in other hospitals, that it’s only temporary and that some women can be treated at home, so they are all right.  The managers say they don’t know when your local ward will be open again, but a member of staff accidentally lets it slip that it’s a 6 month temporary closure.  That’s the whole of your treatment.

Six months away from your home, your friends, your family, all your support networks, the places you know and like, the town you live in.  Six months with only seeing your children perhaps once or twice a week, but the visits are fraught as they are tired after the journey and there’s nothing for them to do at the hospital.  Six months without the chance to go for a coffee during the day with a friend. Six months of hearing your children cry on the phone to you at night as they don’t understand why you can’t come home.  Six months and there is NOTHING you can do about it.

This sounds ridiculous doesn’t it?   A hospital wouldn’t close its doors to all women as there were more men who needed treatment.  No one would send you away for six months of treatment with no chance of being closer to home.

But if you’re a female mental health patient in North Lancashire that is exactly what is going on and exactly what would happen to you if you needed inpatient care right now. It is what would happen to me and to my children if I got seriously ill again.

At first glance Beds in the Orchard looks like a small local issue.  After all, what concern should be 6 female inpatient beds in one small psychiatric unit in a one small city be to people elsewhere in the country?

But don’t be fooled by the small, local appearance of Beds in the Orchard.  What has happened at The Orchard it is indicative of a much wider problem across the country with the chronic underfunding of Mental Health services impacting on the health and wellbeing of thousands of people and communities.  It is indicative of the hard price being paid by women and their families nationally; as they find that their local inpatient psychiatric care has disappeared, leading to them being separated from their support at the time when they need it most.

You need to take an interest because it may be the hospital in your town that stops admitting women next.  It may be your mother, your daughter your sister, or even you who finds yourself being sent miles away for care with no chance of being treated closer to home.  It could be your friend with severe PND or Puerperal Psychosis separated from her baby or young children for months on end.  It could be you if that niggling sense of unease you have turns into a severe depression. 

As time and again, the cuts to mental health care and the loss of psychiatric beds are not seen as newsworthy, and campaigns like ours are dismissed as being “too small” or “too local” for people take an interest; the wider picture of the loss of services is consistently missed and hidden.  Hidden, of course, right up until you need the service, only to find it’s not there. 

What makes it all even more difficult to get public interest is that the women it affects most are the ones who are often too ill, or too scared or too anxious to stand up for themselves, as is made clear in the piece about our campaign in the Huffington Post.  There is only strength and interest in numbers, which is why we need people who are strong enough to stand up for those who can’t.

Mental illness can happen to anyone.  It happened to me.  It could happen to you too.  Help us stand up for the women of North Lancashire by signing our petition or by getting involved using the information on elsewhere on this blog.  Help us let Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust know that this has to change,

Thank you.

S's Story - Moving female patients out of town is at best ludicrous, at worst, dangerous.

As our campaign gains wider attention, we are being contacted by more local service users who were not aware of the changes or the campaign to reverse the decision.  One of those service users "S" shares her fears and concerns about this change.

This is more first hand knowledge and experience of how the changes impact on service users and their families.

Dear Beds in the Orchard,

Hope this helps/makes sense as I struggle to write when unwell.

Suggestions that moving female inpatients out of town is not damaging to patients is, at best, ludicrous and at worst dangerous.

I personally know from my struggles with bipolar II, that I can rarely attend meetings with my CPN without the support of my partner and son. They are central to my recovery. If I was shipped out of town there is no way we would have time or means to keep up contact - potentially breaking bonds with my son, that I have fought so hard to rebuild since my PND, PTSD and psychotic episode on the postnatal ward after staff saw fit to (guess what) move me! All against the advice of the MH professionals...

In spite of the rise of stay at home dads and many families successfully co-parenting; my personal experience suggests that in the majority, women run their homes, make decisions regarding children and are better placed to arrange their child's day to day activities - even those women with difficult mental health issues.

For many patients gaining control in a positive way helps their recovery - taking away this option will greatly hinder recovery, increase stress and in turn extend stays in hospital.

This should be about what is best for the patient. If I were to be moved out of town because the help and care I would recieve would be greater then of course I would consider it short term, when I'm at my very worst BUT that isn't happening here and even in the above hypothetical situation I still would need to be moved closer to home as my mental state improved in order to become stable.

For people who struggle with change and need consistency this cruel decision needs looking at again.

Away from family and early release - A husband speaks out

As we've said many times before, the closure of The Orchard to women doesn't just affect the women themselves.  It affects their families and those around them.  This email is from the husband of one service user from our area.

In 14 yrs of using of using mental health services this is the first time I've heard of any spare capacity in the female inpatient provision in Lancaster. It was always rare that a bed would be available for my wife when admission was needed, and a regular occurrence that home leave would lead to loss of a bed. 

When my daughter was 3 years old we had to travel to Kendal hospital for about 6 weeks using public transport, that was difficult, costly and time consuming. Just recently my wife had to be admitted to Burnley due to Lancaster having no spare beds. 

This resulted in poor care provision as the staff had no knowledge of her personality prior to illness or of the best way to deal with her. They then proceeded to discharge her before she had properly recovered causing extreme distress to our family who then had to cope with the aftermath of her actions. 

All of this could have been avoided had local care with those who know her been available, and easy access for her family who have been very proactive in her care and recovery with daily input.

Let's just remind ourselves again that when Keith Dibble was asked "Do you accept that moving these women further away from their families and children could be damaging?"  He replied "We believe not".

We are still telling you that it does.  We have first hand experience that it does.

Start listening Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust.  You are failing in your duty of care to us and we will not go away.