Michael Hickling: A family’s torment over closure of Bootham Park Hospital

Severely ill in-patients have been shipped to distant parts, mostly Middlesbrough, in recent days.

The hospital’s out-patients have been left high and dry. No one knows anything. Staff at the hospital, as well as the city’s GPs and other health professionals, are entirely in the dark.

They said so at a packed meeting called by the Labour MP for York Central, Rachael Maskell. The media were not allowed in. I was there because my daughter was an in-patient at Bootham Park and is now an out-patient.

One Sunday, I found her unconscious in her bedroom. She had tried to kill herself with drink and prescription drugs. She was taken to York General Hospital for emergency treatment. They saved her life, but the following day her psychotic state was still so extreme that a security guard had to be posted on the ward to which she had been admitted and two others stood guard outside the door.

York General Hospital adjoins Bootham Park Hospital, where no bed was available until the following day. The General Hospital explained that it could not provide security at night. So it was put to us that our daughter, who was in a really poor way, would have to be sectioned and despatched to another mental hospital. They could not say where this would be, although Bristol and Liverpool were mentioned.

Or she could stay overnight on the ward in the General Hospital if we took responsibility for the security which three guards had provided in daytime. Our daughter was on an all-female ward, so this meant my wife, who is in her mid-sixties and not in good health, had to sit by her bed, restraining her throughout the night, occasionally running after her when she tried to flee.

The following day our daughter was admitted to Bootham Park Hospital where she stayed for about two weeks.

This is just a snapshot of the anguish which sufferers of severe mental health problems and their families endure. It also shows Bootham Park Hospital is far from perfect. But it’s better than nothing, which is what – unbelievably – we have now in York.

Bootham Park Hospital was shut on the instructions of the Care Quality Commission (CQC). The hospital has had a run-in with them before, in December 2013. They reported patients told them the care was very good. But CQC inspectors objected to the wires of the Christmas lights, which they said could be used as ligatures. All the Christmas lights were removed.

Potential ligature points were identified when the CQC paid its last official visit about six months ago. It ordered rectifying work be carried out. At the beginning of last month, the CQC carried out an unannounced inspection to check if the work had been completed.

It had not. During this visit it was reported in the local Press that part of the ceiling fell on the inspectors. The CQC ordered that Bootham Park be closed forthwith.

Dr Bob Adams retired last year as a senior psychiatrist at Bootham Park and now works for the Mental Health Tribunal Service. He happened to be working at the Middlesbrough hospital where Bootham Park patients have been sent. He says the clear impression in Middlesbrough was that the roof at Bootham Park had fallen in. Someone had been spinning the story. According to Dr Adams, all that fell from the Bootham Park ceiling during the inspection was a small piece of plaster.

Until last Wednesday, the hospital was run by the Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. They had imposed a strategy which, it seems, had worked in Leeds but proved unsuitable in York. They lost their £90m contract, which was to be taken on by the Tees, Esk and Wear Valley Trust (TEWV).

This contract was not signed until last Thursday, after the hospital’s closure. It is not even clear what the TEWV will be running. The doors are locked and the CQC has de-registered Bootham Park hospital. It takes the CQC 20 weeks to complete a new registration.

The paramount immediate concern has to be the safety of the people who are risk. This outcome has put them in jeopardy. Apparently the fashionable term to use in Government circles with regard to the treatment and welfare of mental health patients is ‘parity of esteem’.

I’m sending this in the hope they will get parity of publicity.

Michael Hickling is a retired journalist from York.