Ashworth staff given warning
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Your support makes all the difference.STAFF at Ashworth Hospital who refuse to back attempts to foster a more humane and enlightened regime have no future there, its new manager warned yesterday.
Peter Green took over as acting general manager of the Merseyside hospital, after Wednesday's publication of a damning inquiry report showing patients were routinely beaten, bullied and degraded by staff over a decade.
Mr Green's warning was followed by an end to the overtime ban mounted by 200 members of the Prison Officers' Association at Ashworth last month in protest at the sacking of two staff who terrorised patients with a pig's head.
The POA, the largest union at Ashworth, resumed normal working in the interests of patients, a union spokesman said. 'We have, during this dispute, enjoyed the support of patients and it has never been our intention to affect the care given to them.'
Mr Green had earlier told staff: 'We have taken the first few steps in a thousand mile journey and I am quite happy to continue that journey. I need to take people along with me - if people don't want to go along with me, there is no place for them in Ashworth Hospital.'
Summaries of the report were circulated yesterday to the hospital's 1,400 staff and 650 patients.
Mr Green, the former director of rehabilitation at the hospital, took over yesterday over from Brian Johnson, who has been moved to other duties. He said there had been a 'stunned silence' from staff in reaction to the report by government advisers.
Mr Green disclosed that in addition to the seven members of staff suspended in the wake of Wednesday's report, another five had received letters advising them that they would be subject to internal investigations.
He said the hospital was already working to cut down the use of seclusion on patients, and that it had been reduced by 50 per cent at Ashworth in the past three years.
The Ashworth scandal was the latest in a long line allowed to develop at psychiatric hospitals over the past 30 years, despite recommendations by 10 national inquiries, according to a report in the British Medical Journal today. Its author, Robert Bluglass, Professor of Forensic Psychiatry at Birmingham University, says most of the 1,700 patients in special hospitals should be cared for in new local high-security units with up to 150 beds apiece.
'The prevailing culture of the old institutions must be replaced with an emphasis on care, treatment, stimulation and rehabilitation. Security should be regarded as integral to the treatment rather than the main objective.'
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