Taxpayers’ huge bill as feud strands woman in hospital for 14 YEARS

TAXPAYERS have shouldered the multi-million pound cost of keeping a young woman in hospital for almost 14 years while her parents battled local health authorities over where she should live when discharged.

The parents of ‘P’, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, want their daughter – who has complex needs that require around-the-clock healthcare help – to live with them in a specially adapted home.

But successive delays, followed by an apparent U-turn by health authorities who now want her to go to a nursing home, have delayed her release from hospital, where she has spent most of her time in a high-dependency unit (HDU). As an HDU bed costs about £1,000 a day, her extended stay is likely to have cost up to £5 million.

Last month, a judge sitting in the Court of Protection, which deals with cases where a person lacks mental capacity to make their own decisions, ruled she should be moved to a nursing home.

Her parents, who spend many hours a day with her, say this will cause her condition to deteriorate because she will be deprived of the support they provide.

While the judge left the door ajar for P to move into the family home in the future, her parents fear once she is in the nursing home she will stay there permanently. ‘They have been determined to exclude us so they can shuffle her off to this care home and wash their hands of her,’ said P’s father. ‘We believe if she goes there she will never get out.

‘She is ready for home. She is at the most stable she’s been during her time in hospital. To put her in another institution, miles away from family, with visitor restrictions – it’s just not humane.’

P’s parents first tried to get their daughter discharged a decade ago. Midway through her

‘A nursing home will be devastating for her’

stay, they obtained agreement in principal for her to be moved to the family home, but delays – first practical and then Covidrelated – have frustrated them.

More recently, say P’s parents, hospital and social services bosses changed their minds. Their lawyers claim the hospital trust and clinical commissioning group concocted a secret plan to place her in a nursing home, without consulting them.

P’s mother said: ‘If she’s put in a nursing home, it will be absolutely devastating for her. What crime has she committed, to be put there? If that happens, we fear she’ll go downhill mentally and physically, because she is highly dependent on us.’

The NHS hospital trust declined to comment.