Friday, February 13, 2004

Mental health – checks on restraint and care planning (UK)
Brief news item at Health and Care - " A Government inquiry into the death of an African-Caribbean hospital patient is recommending a range of improvement in mental health services. Designed to make provision more sensitive to ethnic minorities, the reforms proposed by the team examining the case of David ‘Rocky’ Bennett, who died in the Norvic Clinic in Norwich in 1998, will have wide implications for work with all service users who have mental health problems in a variety of care and treatment settings..." See also Sympathy but no promises from Reid in The Guardian - "The government refused yesterday to accept the three key recommendations of an inquiry into the death of David "Rocky" Bennett which identified a "festering abscess" of institutional racism in the NHS. John Reid, the health secretary, told MPs he agreed there was unacceptable discrimination against black mental health patients. But his statement avoided giving the promise demanded by the inquiry that 'there should be ministerial acknowledgment of the presence of institutional racism in the mental health services'."