Woman evicted from NHS hospital ward after being stuck for 18 months

[SerendipityJane]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c897ew0ekp4o

So much of this thread essentially boils down to people complaining that a mentally ill women isn’t acting in a sensible and sane way.

And if her mother refuses? Or if she refuses to let her mother take it?

Some of my family thought it was OK to bin my possessions from their correct storage in my bedroom that they disapproved of me having. Thirty years later, I still distrust anyone else with my stuff.

As I said, if her EUPD diagnosis is accurate, the EUPD didn't come from nowhere. Would you trust someone who had abused you, or let you be abused, with your possessions?

I'll say again, she wouldn't have had to. The social work involvement that she most undoubtedly has would have arranged storage of her possessions for free, if she wanted them to. They would have offered it.

Yup. Probably the same people who think that disabled people's benefits should be stopped to force us all into jobs but wouldn't ever dream of working alongside someone like this patient.

Why was her previous care home okay up until she was due to be released from hospital? It suddenly couldn't meet her needs. From the article it sounds like she's violent

The hospital security should have insisted on the removal of the source of the loud music. Her rights don't trump the other patients' particularly as they are ill and she is not.

I'm sure that the eyerolling of the doctors really supported your recovery from whatever psychiatric condition you were sectioned for. 🙄

This is surmising but it is possible that they weren't OK, but her going into hospital gave them a reason not to take her back. I'm not commenting on the rights and wrongs of this case because I don't know the background, but it happens and they are going to be able to do it.

I think people are complaining that a medically fit patient took up a bed for 18 months.
If she was that mentally unwell surely transfer to a MH ward would have been deemed appropriate.

Absolutely spot on. I probably saw your husband - the police attended to her three times in the two weeks I was on a ward with her. She terrorised the patients, staff and the patients' visitors. And I maintain that she knew exactly what she was doing. Her regular telephone calls to someone late at night told in great detail all the 'new shit' she had done to everyone that day, just for her own amusement. And how hilarious it was that nobody could deal with her.

And to those suggesting there's too much victim shaming and blaming on this thread.....perhaps you could spend two weeks in this woman's vicinity, as a patient trying to recover from major surgery, but not able to do so in a calm and pleasant environment. Or maybe try being the young HCA forced to listen to her torrent of personal, scathing verbal abuse, or the cleaner who has to dodge the jug of water being thrown at them, because it didn't have ice in it.

Be one of those people for a while and then come back and tell me who the victim is.

A

The word you are looking for is "opportunism". They will have wanted rid of her for a while, then when she was in hospital they will have terminated the contract to care for her.

And these shysters take our taxes to dump patients on hospitals like this.

I've worked with people who have very similar situations. In some cases their condition is used as an excuse for them to behave as they wish with absolutely no responsibility.
I've been beaten, assaulted and threatened in my everyday working environment...with a response of "I've got a personality disorder, so you can't do anything". Police are reluctant to get involved, even if the person has capacity. It can be very challenging.
I strongly believe that this individual will be given full support with a package of care and suitable accommodation, although it may not be in the area she wants, but she will probably self harm or threaten to self harm and be back in an acute service hospital bed within a week of discharge and the whole process will start again for this NHS trust or whichever one she is admitted to.
From my experience...this lady does not belong in a care home, as these are usually intended for the frail elderly therefore not a suitable environment for her and probably causing some issues with impacting the care of others.
Although there is definitely a lack of beds/facilities for "young disable".
There's probably very good/obvious reasons that 120 places wouldn't offer her accommodation and why her recent place of residence refused to take her back and they are not the fault or failings of the NHS.

This was exactly what happened to my MIL.
She was desperately ill, with a brain tumour, but had been misdiagnosed as having a water infection.
They discharged her and made her sit in the discharge lounge for hours. DP was also in hospital at the time, and BIL was working away so they just called a taxi for her. She collapsed when home and was re-admitted within days.
As she was so confused they were able to say that she had agreed to leave.

These days, you have to be pretty much murderous to be admitted to a psych ward. I was suicidal and frequently self-harming, yet a psych ward place wasn't an option.

It's likely that there wasn't a psych ward bed for her.

You might also call it "desperation" remember that the care home will have many other residents who will probably have been distressed, maybe even terrorised by this person.

Totally agree. I read the article and felt very little sympathy for her.

This sadly does not surprise me, the way the system works means professionals have to bend the knee to people like this who know how to 'work the system'

This article is giving her the justification she wants and ammo to further throw at the police, social services and the hospital.

Well done BBC for exploiting publicly a severely mentally ill woman.

also that she may not have been sectionable which is the only way you can force someone to enter NHS facilities.

Why didn’t they clean her up bed when she went out for lunch and put someone else in it? Get hospital security to prevent her going back in.

What a nightmare. I don’t understand why if she refused to go to the place she was offered, she wasn’t kicked out the next day.

Although there is definitely a lack of beds/facilities for "young disable".

This. There's posters on MN at their wits end, being assaulted by their own kids who have SEN, and there's nothing for those families either. Basically, the care system at present assumes that disabled children and working age adults will be cared for by their families, because paying subsistence benefits to kinship carers is cheaper than professional care. It's going to take a kinship carer being killed by the person they care for before anyone even thinks about improving this situation.

There's probably very good/obvious reasons that 120 places wouldn't offer her accommodation and why her recent place of residence refused to take her back and they are not the fault or failings of the NHS.

I don't think that a single person on this thread has blamed the NHS for this.

You nailed it there, and not for the reasons you think.

because NHS facilities can't do it apart from legally via eviction

It would also appear that she is surrounded by either complacent or very toxic enablers

This is absolutely appalling.
This woman gets hundreds of thousands of pounds thrown at her trying to help and she just won’t accept any help?
It’s such a massive waste of resources.
I’m sure the £200,000 wasted on this woman ( mentioned elsewhere) could have been far better spent on people that actually want help.

Plus hard working staff who have to put up with her abuse?
So wrong on so many levels.