The national policy of ‘Least restrictive practice’ puts everyone but the most dangerous patients at greater risk. Fact.
I’ve been reading the Calocane report, otherwise known the Independent Mental Health Homicide Review into the care and treatment of Valdo Calocane. Theemis Consulting investigated and wrote the report (*). NHS England published it in full, eventually, after trying to suppress it and pretend it was to protect the patients’ confidentiality.
*) I’ve seen no explanation who chose them, over which other candidates and why,
nor what the scope and limits of the inquiry were.
NB a full public inquiry has been agreed and will be chaired by former senior circuit judge, Her Honour (HH) Deborah Taylor. And the Secretary of State asked the institutionally incompetent CQC to investigate and produce a report.
Fellow citizens, don’t get your hopes up. None of this tosh looks at the real drivers behind what went wrong, why professionals didn’t make Calocane take an injection, didn’t section him, didn’t put him on a CTO, didn’t treat his illness, why he was allowed to get worse, avoid arrest, and eventually murder three people and leave another probably wishing it was four.
So what is actually known?
Thanks here to solicitor Neil Hudgell who writes,
Without the full report, you wouldn’t know today:
- how frightened health professionals were to visit Valdo Calocane,
- how they withdrew on occasion,
- how they planned their exits, yet at the same time were willing to discharge him from care in the face of very obvious risks of danger.
You wouldn’t know the extent to which Valdo Calocane had insight into his own condition. He got better in hospital, he got worse when he was released. He knew what taking his medication did to him.
It slowed him down, it impaired his studies. He didn’t like needles.
He also knew what not taking his medicine did to him. He knew how it made him paranoid, knew how it made him violent.
All of this was known to health professionals, who observed the stockpiling of medication at his home.
Those same health professionals who could have insisted on the administration of long-lasting injectable anti-psychotic medication (also known as depot) prior to release but didn’t do so.
You were doing well Neil, until the last paragraph. I’ll explain where you went wrong.
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