Town to lose mental health or dementia inpatient service
PATIENTS are being faced with a stark choice of the loss of a dementia OR mental health inpatient service at Macclesfield hospital, under new plans unveiled by NHS bosses.
The Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (CWP) says it needs to make changes to its services to keep up with increasing demand and reduced budgets.
Under plans unveiled this week the 58-bed Millbrook Unit, which provides beds for people with dementia and adults with acute mental health problems is to close.
And while there are options to move some of the services to Lime Walk House, based on Victoria Road in Macclesfield, this is only big enough to provide beds for either adult mental health or dementia, which means the other service would be moved to Chester.
Dr Ian Hulme, who is a GP and NHS Eastern Cheshire CCG lead for mental health, said a consultation, which is expected to go out to the public next year, will ask people to choose.
He said: “Keeping the Millbrook Unit is not really an option. It’s a choice between older people’s services or if we think it would be better to keep acute adult care in Macclesfield.”
But Coun Alift Harewood-Jones, a former mental health nurse who represents Macclesfield West and Ivy, said the decision is ‘crazy’.
She said: “Is this choice? We need both and we need both locally, not only for people who go through those life events but for the supporters and their nearest and dearest.
“Both these services are essential to the well-being and progress and the maintenance of the local community.
“They are both dependent physiologically and emotionally on the people who support them and the community in which they have risen. Care is not only given by professionals.
“If they need acute care then they should have it in their community. This is crazy, we are going backwards.”
Michael Heale, 68, of Kennedy Avenue, is chairman of the East Cheshire Mental Health Forum, and campaigning to keep both services in the town.
He said: “We shouldn’t have to choose - they should ensure there are provisions for both. If they don’t have the money they should go out and find it.
“We should not have to travel 82 miles for either of these services.”
Macclesfield MP David Rutley said he had serious concerns about patients having to travel to Chester.
He said: “We need to continue to retain highquality mental health services in and around Macclesfield. Putting a greater emphasis on community mental health services, as Cheshire and Wirral Partnership (CWP) is proposing, is an important objective, but I continue to believe that it is vital to keep beds for adults with acute mental health needs here in Macclesfield.
“Before there is any consultation on the redesign of adult and older people’s mental health services in Cheshire East, CWP will need to clearly justify why, and how, it believes it can deliver adult acute services with only six short-stay beds for crisis care in Macclesfield.
“There are other important questions that need to be answered about the shape and design of community-based packages of mental health care that would be made available, and how they will be deliv- ered for patients.
“I also have strong concerns about the travel times and costs for carers who would need to visit those patients who would receive treatment at Bowmere Hospital in Chester, under CWP’s proposals.
“I will be raising these concerns with Sheena Cumiskey, CWP’s chief executive, at a planned meeting on Friday, and will continue to work closely with East Cheshire Mental Health Forum, our local campaign group, in the weeks ahead.”