FAILED NOW FAILED AGAIN
There is lots of talk, lots of meetings, groups and strategies but when it comes to action, real change, what happens? – Freda Douglas, who lost her daughter Evie
Exactly a year ago, they spoke to The Sunday Post about the loss of their daughters, hoping their stories of loss and of systemic failure in mental health services for young Scots would help bring change.
Today, they say, those hopes have been dashed as promised reforms stall and far too many young people wait in despair for lifechanging lifesaving help that never comes.
Every day since her daughter Evie’s death in November 2014, just one week after being discharged from Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Freda Douglas has asked her herself what more she could have done.
“I wish I had known then what I know now – maybe I would have approached things differently,” she explained. “Everyone in my situation feels that on a daily basis. What else could I have done? What might have changed things? Could I have seen the warning signs? You constantly berate yourself thinking about the ‘what ifs’.”
However, as a 2016 ombudsman investigation concluded, it was failings by mental health services in Lothian that led to Evie, just 21, feeling “lost and abandoned” after being discharged from the service after barely a month, with no care plan or emergency follow-up support. In the weeks, months and years following Evie’s suicide, Douglas has battled for change – and she now fears it has all been in vain.
She continued:
“In the seven years since my daughter’s death, frustration has been the biggest issue. After the fight we went through, taking the case to the ombudsman and having an investigation, recommendations were made and I thought, ‘We are getting somewhere, we are making an impact’.
“But I don’t see evidence that the recommendations were implemented. There’s a lot of talk, lots of meetings, groups and strategies, but when it comes to the action, what happens? How is it implemented, and what changes are actually made? We seem to talk about change but don’t get around to acting on it.”
That stark, dismaying assessment is shared by Ruth Moss, who lost her daughter, Sophie Parkinson, when she took her own life at her home in Liff, near Dundee, in March 2014, aged 13. A Fatal Accident Inquiry into Sophie’s death found that a structured risk assessment and better communication between her parents and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) could have prevented her death.
Speaking to The Sunday Post one year ago, Moss called for a complete overhaul of CAMHS, and now fears the time it has taken for government policy to be implemented is
time children in crisis do not have.
She said: “Government policies, while very noble, take time and money to trickle down to the frontline – and children don’t have that time. They need help now.
“When children have to wait, you feel abandoned by the service and also helpless as parents. I just felt like a failure, if I’m honest. I couldn’t keep my child safe because they needed professional help, and we just couldn’t get it.”
However, witnessing first-hand the “abysmal” quality of care after being referred, Moss is quick to point out that the problem is not just waiting times.
She continued: “It’s about the quality of the service once you get in there, and that’s very hard to measure. We can audit waiting times, look at them and say, for example, ‘Well this is the percentage of children that got into the service within the 18 weeks, these are the ones that didn’t, and these are the number of projected referrals’.
“That’s all very objective data – but who’s auditing the service after that? It’s a two-fold problem. You only need to read need the FAI report into Sophie’s death, and the two expert witness reports, which are pretty damning. Sophie would be alive today had preventative care been good.”
For Douglas, who now volunteers as a counsellor, it’s not just children who are at risk from backlogged mental health services. Although the full impact of the pandemic is not yet known, she says demand has already started to grow, and adults are suffering, too.
She said: “Mental health services for people beyond 18 are in a dire situation. I hear from people who are suicidal and have actively searched for help only to find it’s just not there. They are faced with waiting lists – endless waiting lists – and even when they are in crisis, presenting, for example, at a psychiatric hospital, they are listened to for a wee while before they are told they will be OK and are sent home.
“People just don’t know where they can go. Even in my counselling role, I don’t know where to signpost people because it seems like it’s just waiting lists everywhere.
“We are doing a much better job now, I think, of raising awareness of mental health, but what is the follow-up? If you do reach crisis point, what service is there? There really is very little – it’s almost like a postcode lottery.”
She continued: “For me, the only way we can improve the situation for everyone is if we go right back to the roots with education. If the next generation are better prepared, if they know what the early signs of declining mental health look like, then maybe society will be better prepared. It’s about normalising the conversation.”