Southwark: Ex-nurse warns over clinic closure

A former nurse has spoken out to defend a vital mental health clinic threatened with closure - reports icSouthLondon.

Ian Rawlins damned proposals to close the Felix Post Unit (FPU), which is a centre used by the elderly.

Mr Rawlins has spent 25 years working in the NHS, the past five as an associate nurse in the clinic in the Maudsley Hospital, Denmark Hill.

He left earlier this year and says he is appalled at moves to close the FPU.

"It's time to stand up," he said. "This would have a severe impact on these people, on their families and on their communities. I was shocked to hear a senior manager at one meeting talk about 'through-put' - getting people in and out as quickly as possible without trying to look at the whole person. He may as well have called it 'conveyor belt care'."

"There are always other factors with one of our patients - physical things, family things, social problems. It's more than just their mental health."

He believes if the service is scrapped patients with physical or social problems will stop getting the joined-up care they need.

The FPU works as a drop-in centre which sees around 30 people a day.

Elderly patients can get help on the spot for mental health problems and advice on anything else they need.

Southwark Pensioners Action Group (SPAG) and Southwark Mind have both responded angrily to plans to cut or close the centre.

But South london and Maudsley NHS Trust (SLaM) said a consultation on the future of the FPU and day-care services across Lambeth and Southwark was planned for later in the year.

If closed, the FPU would be the second unit closed by SLaM in a year,after the Maudsley's 24-hour emergency clinic was shut to patients in May.

Campaigners are fighting to over-turn that decision. North Southwark and Bermondsey MP Simon Hughes recently submitted a 5,000-signature petition calling for it to be reopened.