RIGHT SUPPORT NEEDED On paper their task is huge. Nationally 40 per cent of prisoners have a mental health issue, while 60 per cent are thought to have some sort of learning difficulty. In 2016 there were more than 40,000 incidents of self-harm in Britain’s prisons. As far back as 2009 a report by Lord Bradley called on the Government to establish teams to ensure the right mental health and learning disability support and services are available for people in contact with the criminal justice system. Yet in February 2017, the Royal College of Psychiatrists stated that ‘rising deaths and other harms show there are failures in reaching prisoners who need general medical and specialist mental healthcare’.
At HMP Liverpool mental health, physical health and substance misuse teams were working in isolation. Waits for referrals could mean lengthy delays in getting treatment while the situation worsened.
Nationally 40% of prisoners have a mental health issue, while 60% are thought to have some sort of learning difficulty.
THE BEGINNING OF A REVOLUTION Eighteen months later, a new governor and a new approach are in place. For Pia Sinha it’s the beginning of a revolution. “When I got here everything seemed broken. We had an ‘us’ and ‘them’ philosophy with our partners. The first response to a crisis was ‘who is to blame’ rather than learning from the event. When I heard about Mersey Care’s learning culture to improve I thought ‘this is exactly what I’m thinking we need here in HMP Liverpool’.
Stella Hannaway, Jonathan Drew and Pia Sinha.
We had to do a lot of trust building - but we chose each other.
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