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one of the defining features of health provision in Cardiff, although the Victorian asylum model is now considerably out of date.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.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 24th, 2010 at 10:29 am and is filed under Constituency matters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.