What's happening in the Health Service?(25/8/1997)

27th August '97
What's happening in the Health Service?



Sperrin Lakeland Health and Social Services Trust is a health authority in the North covering the sprawling area of Fermanagh and mid -Tyrone.It caters for the health needs of tens of thousands of people.
In 1959, Enoch Powell, the then Tory Minister of Health decried psychiatric hospitals as "barbaric institutions" and set a semi-anarchist agenda of closing them down. This was the government reaction to the development of the first generation of medication for mental illness. Malcolm Moss the Northern Ireland Minister for Health reaffirmed this objective before the Tories were so belatedly turfed out of office. Today management is conniving at the closure of the Tyrone and Fermanagh Psychiatric Hospital in Omagh, a hospital which once catered for over one thousand patients. The days are clearly gone when unmarried mothers were thrown into hospital for "moral insanity" by well paid doctors but would the closure of a hospital be a step forward for people with mental illness ? Today people with personality disorders are cast out "into the community" to be a magnet for ruffians and wasters when their welfare payments are paid. Others with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder are "living in the community" i.e. hanging around the piers in Enniskillen swilling cheap cider and knocking back painkillers as long as their social security payments and prescriptions last. This is the glory of the much-loved Tory "concept" of "care in the community".

The managers plan to close the continuing care wards in the T & F. This would be a disaster as the alternative is "care" in hostels where the staff are trained only in first aid. Junior nurses in the T & F confirm that private nursing homes refuse to employ trained psychiatric staff in these homes.

Management also plan to close the acute wards for recovering patients and transfer acute care to Derry. Clients are up in arms at these moves through their representative organisations, the Advocacy Groups.

Dozens of staff - 44, to be precise - were discarded by the Health Trust in late 1994 and have not been replaced. Their skills go a-begging as managers career onwards on a thoroughly reckless course. The unions are suppliant and run around like men with a hole in the head. They offer no way forward because of weak leadership over the past 18 years.

Clients in Fermanagh are fighting back at every level. If you want to know more or want to set it up get in touch with:
Erne Advocacy Group, C/O ITO, Drumcoo, Enniskillen, County Fermanagh.

An Irish Advocacy Network in being planned.

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