Wotton Lawn: Councillors call for briefing on psychiatric unit

Councillors want a briefing on conditions at a mental health facility following safety "horror stories".

Members of Gloucester City Council's health overview and scrutiny committee (HOSC) want to quiz bosses about recent reported incidents at Wotton Lawn Hospital in Gloucester.

On Tuesday the BBC and Sky News published concerns from patients and families about how the unit is run.

The hospital's trust, said the issues had been "thoroughly investigated".

Freedom of information requests by the BBC revealed 97 people had been reported missing between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2022.

Over the same period, Gloucestershire Police received 4,611 phone calls relating to the unit, and officers attended on 171 occasions.

In March last year William Warrington, who had been detained under the Mental Health Act, absconded from the unit and killed both his parents.

Sky's report on Wotton Lawn this week showed staff photographed asleep at work and patients on the roof.

At a meeting of the HOSC on Tuesday, Councillor Collette Finnegan, of Abbeydale ward, said she was "not at all surprised" by the situation at Wotton Lawn, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

She said: "I know one nurse has recently left Wotton Lawn after working there for over 20 years. And the stories that she told me were quite awful.

"She came to me as the health champion. And I said to her to go and talk to management.

"But she didn't feel she would be supported and after working there for so long, being injured by patients etc - some real horror stories - and she's left."

Ms Finnegan said: "She said she wasn't the only one who was going to leave so I'm not surprised by this story because I've been hearing about it for some years."

Valerie Warrington, William Warrington's mother, was a resident of Councillor Paul Hodgkinson's ward of Bourton-on-the-Water and Northleach.

Cllr Hodgkinson said he had raised concerns about that case, and asked for a full briefing around the issue at the next meeting and the possibility to ask questions.

"There's obviously a lot going on here," he said.

Andrew Gravells, chairman of the HOSC, said he would like a briefing on what the current issues are.

He said: "Surely as HOSC we are entitled to know when there are these major stories affecting services and the NHS in Gloucestershire."

A spokesperson for Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation trust said they acknowledge they do not get everything right.

They added they actively seek and encourage feedback from people who use their services as well as trust colleagues, as a way of bringing about improvements.

The spokesperson said staff had a direct, anonymous link to the trust's chief executive, and a staff representatives whom they could approach with concerns.

"Every piece of feedback we receive is recorded, discussed with colleagues and acted upon where needed. We also receive a lot of compliments about the care we provide," they said.

"We know we do not get everything right, but our colleagues work hard, often in very difficult circumstances, to support our patients to recover and be safely discharged every day."

Follow BBC West on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to: [email protected]