My email response to bilge from Community Healthcare

I have read and then re-read your email. Either I am not grasping what David McAuley is stating or my mental illness is preventing me from understanding what is being said, or the following.....

The inability of David McAuley to manage funding for the POS facility has meant that it has no staffing. He is now stating that the POS facility is also in the wrong place, which was not previously mentioned, apart from a brief article in the Plymouth Herald. In these times of austerity, is it wise to create another unit. From a compassionate point of view is is kind to create another place from which detainees may have to endure the stress of being moved to Glenbourne after assessment
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As Mr McAuley is obviously in touch with the Plymouth Herald, he will therefore have read the article, 'Mentally ill should be hospital not cells, says MP', dated September 15th 2012. Within this article it was stated by Oliver Colvile MP, that Police feel that the detention of mentally ill persons within cells rather than the POS facility, 'is an inappropriate way to deal with these people, that in some cases they make peoples lives worse, rather than better, and that custody officers should be receiving a higher level of training that is currently available'. What sort of training do you think is being alluded to if it is not a 'health issue'?  The article then goes on to state that the attachment of a qualified mental health nurse to the custody suite for assessment of detainees is seen as necessary. Do you wish for me, or Oliver Colvile MP,  to liaise between yourselves and the Police, in order for them to make a more direct appeal to you for direct training, and for the secondment of a qualified nurse to aid them?

When I worked for the Youth Offending Team as a team manager, I worked with trainee Police Officers. They shadowed workers for one week, and then gave a presentation of the work of the Youth Offending Team. Do you really see this as an appropriate method of training Police Officers in the work of the secondary mental health services? Do you think a week as a trainee officer gives an officer a thorough understanding of the multitude of mental illness, the symptoms, risks and vulnerabilities of those who suffer?

As for your lack of understanding of the need for a crisis house in Plymouth, as you know, I am campaigning to raise awareness of the need for one in Plymouth, but I will need to save my thoughts for that for another day.... I find dealing with this exhausting.

I can only presume that your response to my emails of concern shows a lack of understanding of the needs of mentally ill people when they are in crisis; and my intelligence and passion to see what needs to be done for those one in four of the Plymouth population who suffer from mental illness. I hope that you are one of the three in four who do not suffer from any form of mental illness..... it is not something I would wish on anyone.

 

I presume I may quote your email in my press release to the Plymouth Herald.

Please be sure, my work here is not done.... and as irritating as you may find me, I will be back!