Stoke: More mental health beds could face axe

More community beds for mentally ill people could be axed in Stoke-on-Trent following the controversial plan to lose eight at a Tunstall unit.

Health officials yesterday gave notice they may next turn their sights on the city's two other mental health resource centres in Longton and Shelton once the beds at the Greenfield unit have gone.

The beds give short-term intensive care which avoids people having to be admitted to the area's main Harplands psychiatric hospital in Hartshill.

But Stoke-on-Trent's NHS funding body, the primary care trust (PCT), wants to use them instead to rehabilitate longer-stay patients from the hospital.

The move will leave the city with just 16 community beds at the Sutherland centre in Longton and the Bennett unit in Shelton - and the PCT failed to give councillors a guarantee that those were safe.

PCT joint senior commissioning director Jane Tipping told the city's health scrutiny commission that bed use was falling because of schemes to support patients in their own homes.

But councillors voiced fears that the number of remaining beds would be too small to cope, especially as the incidence of stress and depression was growing in society.

Adrian Knapper said: "There is no flexibility here. When all 16 beds are full, are patients number 17 and 18 expected to walk the streets?

"And with the Tunstall patients being moved to beds in Shelton and Longton, the relatives and friends will face transport difficulties visiting them."

Hilda Johnson, from Combined Healthcare's patients forum, said: "We are unhappy about the closure of these beds so we would be worried if they started shutting even more besides."

People in Bennett and Sutherland are already worried that they will be discharged to make room for patients from Greenfield."

The Greenfield bed closures - opposed by a petition from staff and patients - were initially part of a cost-cutting programme unveiled last year.