George Werb

1. 1. insufficient child psychiatric bed availability

   “The community team had to spend much time making numerous telephone calls to locate a child psychiatric bed. There was not at the time, and still appears to be no, or no effective bed bureau system to identify spaces. This is wasteful of clinician time, creates inevitable delays and is indicative that there are routinely too few available beds to serve the needs of our child psychiatric patients.”

2. 2. inadequate inpatient environment

   “Ona previous admission during May 2014 the bed located was in Huntercombe, and [the deceased] was removed by his father as the bedroom had inadequate furniture, had no bed linen and there was concern the environment was adding to [the deceased]'s distress. The distance between home and this placement was in excess of 3 hours travel time.”

3. 3. placement in non-local private facility

   “On the index admission, [the deceased] was placed in the Priory Hospital, Southampton, a distance of over 2 hours travelling time from home. This is not an NHS facility and is specifically for "overflow" patients from all across England, many of whom are therefore huge distances from their home, their family, their friends and community support”

4. 4. lack of local inpatient mental health services

   “Having local accessibility where in patient care is required was recognized in the Mental Health Crisis Care Concordat published 18 February 2014 to be important to keep the young person close to home, school and friends and this was also recognized by all the clinicians at inquest to be important and necessary. With current provision of beds this need is not being met, and is impacting on patient care.”

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