The Blue Print

Last night I attended a public meeting in Whitchurch to discuss the future of adult mental health services in Cardiff and the Vale.

The event organised by the health board and supported by the community health council outlined what their preferred option was for delivering a new model of provision. Looking at this objectively I think they have settled on a proposal which could work, with the shift of acute inpatient beds from Whitchurch to Llandough.

For more than a century mental health services at Whitchurch have been one of the defining features of health provision in Cardiff, although the Victorian asylum model is now considerably out of date. The consequence of shifting the balance of care and recovery from inpatient treatment towards greater community investment means that fewer beds are required. The logic therefore is that only one site is needed for the acute hospital.

The preferred outcome of moving to Llandough took into account two important factors.

Firstly, many people with acute mental health needs, i.e. those who are at the most risk, also tend to have significant physical health needs which can be better treated if their psychological care is co-located with another hospital.

Secondly, and I didn’t know this until last night, there are more people admitted as inpatients to the Llanfair unit at Llandough than at Whitchurch, so the balance of provision is already on that site.

Ultimately with Whitchurch losing its inpatient hospital the attention will focus on what will be provided at the site. Whitchurch has a proud history of providing health services in the north of Cardiff and I firmly believe that it should remain as part of the NHS. We need expanded community mental health teams, greater access to day services for those with mental ill health, new provision around eating disorders, and more services through primary care.

This part of Cardiff North has the ability to deliver new services which will benefit a greater number of people, provided the health board doesn’t decide to sell it for housing.

The announcement this week that the UK Government will consider extending the right to vote to those in our prisons has caused more than a raising of eyebrows, particularly in some of the more sensationalist printed media.

Yesterday I suggested, somewhat tongue in cheek, that in addition to voting perhaps we ought to allow prisoners the chance to leave the boundaries of their environment to undertake their Christmas shopping. In some respects I was also making a point about the absurdity of allowing prisoners to vote.

Voting is a right enjoyed in a free democratic society. It sits alongside many other rights which we enjoy, such as the freedom of association, the freedom to attend educational institutions, to pursue work and leisure opportunities. It is everything associated with our freedom which is at risk if we commit an offence which results in a prison sentence.

Voting at elections is part of the freedom and for these reasons I am baffled as to how the Government, at the insistence of the European Court of Human Rights, can equate the removal of one of those basic freedoms with a spell in prison.

{In an earlier version of this blog I referred to the insistence of the EU. This was an error on my part as the ECHR although a European institution is not regarded as an institution of the EU, however its decisions set judicial precedence for the European Court of Justice and institutions of the EU are also bound to respect the convention.}

Many years ago I visited HMP Cardiff in an official capacity. It was a fascinating insight to what lay ahead for those on their way from Cardiff Crown Court. I also found it to be a terrifying experience. In many respects I have a strong constitution, but on leaving I found myself sitting quietly on the wall  in deep contemplation of what I had experienced.

To me the witnessing of what it meant to lose one’s liberty, to live perhaps briefly or for several years in such a restricted way summed up why prison is important. It’s not just about punishing those who commit crimes to ensure that the public can be safe, nor is it just about the prospect of rehabilitating criminals however important this is.

It is about the deprivation of liberty. The restriction placed on an individual as a reminder of what they had done and why the state has chosen to respond by insisting on a prison sentence.

A Government which reinstates one of the basic expressions of liberty and freedom starts to undermine what a prison sentence is all about.