Articles and Speeches

Failure on Mixed Sex Wards
21-Jul-06, Windsor Express Article.

I cannot imagine what it must be like for someone with a severe mental health challenge, checking themselves into hospital and becoming the victim of a sexual assault.

This week, the Department of Health finally released a report by the National Patients Safety Agency into the incidences of assault in wards across the NHS. The report was ready for publication in November but was not released by the Government until, now despite the mental health charity MIND pressing for its publication under the Freedom of Information Act.

The report showed that women had reported being the victims of more than 100 incidents of rape, sexual assault or sexual harassment in NHS mental health units over a period of two years, with most incidents taking place in the 12 months up to October 2005.

In 1996 the now Prime Minister made a commitment to end the use of mixed-sex wards and 10 years later the people have a right to ask why this is not now the case. Despite its claim that 99% of wards are single sex, research carried out in 2004 by the mental health charity MIND found that only 23% of recent or current in-patients in mental health wards were accommodated in single sex wards.

Even the definition of what makes a ward single sex has been subject to the Government’s spin doctors as often, where it is claimed a ward is single sex, the barrier is nothing more than a curtain round the bed.

This situation is disgraceful: people struggling with a mental health challenge are some of the most vulnerable in our society and it is completely unacceptable that in their hour of need their Government is failing to protect them.

The frustration is also shared by mental health professionals. There is no doubt that doctors, nurses and consultants do a very difficult job extremely well, but their efforts are being let down by a Government that seems unable to keep its promise of ending the use of mixed-sex wards in the NHS.