Hugs joy.. but sadness too
Sports presenter Alison Walker has told how her dementiasuffering mum no longer knows who she is after finally being allowed to give her a hug.
The TV host’s parents Sandy and Olive both have dementia and have been in a Glasgow care home for five-and-a-half years.
After the clampdown on visits to stop the spread of coronavirus, Alison was finally able to hug her parents, both in their 80s, last Friday.
The former BBC presenter, of Glasgow, said: “I was delighted to get in and hug them but I still have a mixture of grief, anger and relief. Up until October, my mum still knew who I was when I’d Skype her. But my visit was tinged with sadness because now she doesn’t correlate me being her daughter or know my name. She just knows I’m familiar.
“My dad doesn’t make any sense in conversation. But when I hugged him, he said, ‘That’s lovely.’ I could feel them get energy from me as we hugged.”
Gordon Blackstock Mentally ill female prisoners should be held in Carstairs amid fears that excluding them is a human rights breach, a report has said.
A review into the State Hospital said prohibiting women from the high-security facility was potentially sexual discrimination.
Female inmates unf it for mainstream prison north of the Border have been treated at a unit in Nottinghamshire since 2007 following a lack of demand.
It has cost the taxpayer £4.5million over the last 10 years for four Scottish women to be held at Rampton Secure Hospital, Forensic Mental Health Services found.
Derek Barron, who headed the Scottish Government review into mental health services for offenders, said transferring women south wasn’t “fit for purpose” and had meant some female offenders had missed out on help.
The director at veterans’ charity Erskine said in the report: “Requiring women to transfer to England for high secure care when men receive it in Scotland creates inequalities in respect of the right to a private and family life as well as access to the appropriate care and treatment.
“Additionally, women receiving high or medium secure care in England have no right to appeal a ga inst the i r detent ion in
conditions of excessive security in the way they would in Scotland.”
He said there was “an urgent need to make high secure provision avai lable to women within Scotland”.
The report also said: “The review heard from clinical teams and relatives of women who had spent years being moved from service to service to try to access the care and treatment they needed.
“This included experiences of high and medium secure care in England. They expressed frustration, despair and anger at the ‘ lamentable lack of facilities for women’.
“They described how the distance of these placements from home disrupts relationships with family and friends. This has an adverse impact on women’s mental health.”
The four women held in Rampton include child killer Theresa Riggi, who died aged 50 in 2014. She killed
twin sons Luke and Austin, eight, and daughter Cecilia, five, at her Edinburgh flat in 2010.
It was recommended that a new wing be set up in Carstairs within nine months. The hospital has capacity for 140 men.
The r e v i ew conc luded : “Arrangements need to be made urgently to provide high secure care for women within Scotland.”
In 2019, the Council of Europe’s committee for the prevention of torture (CPT) published a damning report raising “serious concerns” for “severely mentally ill women” in Cornton Vale prison in Stirling – Scotland’s only women’s jail.
Former lord advocate Dame Elish Angiolini, who led a Scottish Government Commission on Women Offenders in 2012, said a secure psychiatry wing for females had been needed for a decade. Angiolini, who is now a principal at St Hugh’s
College in Oxford, said: “There was a need for such a unit following the Commission on Women Offenders that I chaired in 2011.”
The Scottish Prison Service said: “We are seeing an increase every year in the number of female prisoners presenting with mental health issues.”
The Scottish Conservatives’ Brian Whittle said: “If there are opportunities to deliver appropriate care in a more cost- effective way, that should be explored.”
The State Hospital said: “We welcome the report which details the new vision for the delivery of forensic mental health services in Scotland. We will consider its implications for the State Hospital and the wider forensic network.”
The Scottish Government said: “We are considering each of the recommendations and will respond to them in due course.”
Report says excluding women prisoners could be breach of human rights