Expert: Central hospital facing legal challenges
Documents obtained by the Irish Examiner reveal the extent of the crisis which forced CMH head Professor Harry Kennedy to write to HSE boss Cathal Magee in June warning that legal requirements around care, set down in legislation, were not being adhered to.
Prof Kennedy further cautioned the HSE that a number of patients due to be discharged will be released without “essential treatments” and, as a result, pose “serious community risks” unless they are given high levels of community support.
Despite raising concerns in late 2010 and again in June of this year, key positions remain vacant at the facility, which houses some of the country’s most notorious killers, most of whom are “not guilty by reason of insanity”.
Prof Kennedy raised concerns that:
* During 2010, the hospital had no psychologists at all when it should have eight.
* The hospital is still short six psychologists (it now has two of eight).
* The hospital is short four occupational therapists including a head OT (it now has four of eight).
* Hiring staff who do not have an interest in working with mentally disordered offenders is dangerous and counter-productive.
Prof Kennedy said that legal challenges would be “inevitable and embarrassing” for the HSE and that this all comes down to the recruitment embargo.
“I want to urgently draw your attention to a serious systemic failure to replace essential frontline clinicians at the CMH... the CMH is a high risk intensive service, which cannot operate safely without a full compliment of essential clinicians...
“It is a high-profile service, when things go wrong here, the public perception of mental health suffers... Those detained and not receiving essential psychological and occupational therapy treatments will bring High Court cases for preventative detention.”
The hospital houses high-profile, legally represented patients such as 25-year-old Thomas Connors, who killed a man he thought was the embodiment of the devil when he found him sleeping in the stairwell of an apartment block.
The revelation places even more pressure on minister for state with responsibility for mental health Kathleen Lynch, who said she is going to “seek permission” from the Government to lift the recruit ban in the sector.
However, when 100 posts were exempted from the freeze last year, the HSE told each local area they had to find the money within their own budgets, rendering the move useless.
In March a visiting specialist, Dr Paul Gilluley of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, wrote that although his team was impressed by the high quality of care the patients received, they noted “major challenges”.
In particular there was concern that the lack of psychology input would result in delays in addressing harmful behaviour and therefore result in increased length of stays in hospital.
Dr Gilluley said: “We were very concerned regarding the health and safety not only of service users but also of staff. We would urge that the maintenance programme at the CMH is reviewed as a matter of urgency.”
