Norfolk and Suffolk campaigners travelling to Westminster in efforts to improve mental health services
They'll meet with local MPs and renew calls for the Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust to be broken up
Mental health campaigners in Norfolk and Suffolk are off to Westminster today- claiming that not enough has been done to prevent avoidable death at a local NHS provider.
Those travelling to the capital will meet with local MPs and renew their calls for the Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust to be broken up and for a Statutory Public Inquiry to be set up.
"To make sure that deaths in these circumstances don't happen again"
Mark Harrison is from The Campaign to save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk:
"Sometimes our MPs support our goals and sometimes they don't, it's not clear where they stand at times, but what we are sure about is that this is the biggest death crisis in the NHS.
"The NSFT has to respond by saying how it'll change practices off the back of this, to make sure that deaths in these circumstances don't happen again. We have got a whole range of evidence which shows that there is repeated patterns of causation for deaths that have happened in the Trust.
"The largest deaths crisis in the history of the NHS"
"The evidence that we've collected relates to the Prevention of Future Death notices that have been issued against NSFT. What the campaign has done is looked at deaths that have occurred in similar circumstances following the issuing on these notices.
"The Trust is still creating unnecessary deaths on a huge scale. It all amounts to the largest deaths crisis in the history of the NHS and it's on their watch".
"We are asking the Police to act again now. We've prepared a new report for them to look at after they got back to us in January."
The background:
Campaigners claim there have been 8,440 deaths of patient or service-users between April 2019 and October 2022 at the NSFT.
The provider said they ‘did not recognise’ that figure.
Following this, they wrote to the chief Constables of Norfolk and Suffolk Police in December 2023 asking them to investigate and prosecute the deaths at NSFT, including making an assessment if the threshold for a charge of corporate manslaughter has been reached.
It's after they became concerned at the number of deaths and repeated patterns from previous Prevention of Future Death reports (PFD).
Prior to this, a report by accountancy firm Grant Thornton in June 2023 found that the trust had lost track of the number of patient deaths.
The findings revealed 1,953 patients had died within one month of being discharged.
The report said: "Given the number of patients who die within a month of discharge, more work is needed to understand this cohort, ensure this data is accurate and act on any learning.
"The trust is currently working with GPs through Primary Care Networks to try to improve the capture of cause of death to inform this insight."
Data also found that out of 3,261 patients, 37% had a discharge date recorded after their date of death.
The majority of people were in old-age psychiatry or adult mental illness specialities, and 2,699 of them were aged over 65.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) rated NSFT as “Requires Improvement” in February 2023, but they remain in Special Measures.
It comes after the provider have previously been ‘inadequate’ by the CQC for a fourth time in April 2022.
What has the Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust said?
A spokesperson for Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, said:
“We offer our sincere condolences to all families and carers of people who have lost loved ones. We can assure all families and carers that we are working really hard to learn from these incidents and do our very best to ensure they are minimised in future.
“As a Trust, we are on a rapid, and much needed journey of improvement which has been strengthened by the welcome arrival of our experienced Chief Executive Officer, Caroline Donovan. Caroline has a proven track record for transforming mental health service provision and has made improving the quality of the clinical care provided by our trust, for those that need us, a number one priority.
“A review of prevention of future deaths is already underway to ensure improvements in practice have been made and learning is embedded across our clinical services. Key themes which we are working on, include, but not limited to are communication, waiting times, medicines management and record keeping.
"As an example, one area where we have made considerable progress is our work with service users, families and carers across Norfolk and Suffolk. A detailed carer development programme is in place, supporting carers, families, and those they are caring for. It is also important to note that earlier this year, the Trust moved from a CQC rating of Inadequate to Requires Improvement.
“Over the last six months, there has been a significant amount of work undertaken to improve how to collect, process and use mortality data. We published an update which was shared in January 2024.
"To improve our management and reporting of mortality data, we have developed a new system, which includes an electronic list of all patient deaths that have occurred during care at NSFT or within 6 months of discharge from NSFT services and an interactive dashboard which displays the patient data and allows users to view the information according to a range of different perspectives, such as age, gender and ethnicity. Work started on this new process in April 2023, and it was made live on the 6 November 2023, covering deaths notified after the 1 November 2023.
“Working with our partner organisations, service users, families and carers across Norfolk and Suffolk, we will continue to ensure our local communities have safer, kinder and better mental health services they rightly deserve.”