High security patients need local care, says report

Abstract

Psychiatric care for patients who need to be in high security hospitals should be moved out of large isolated institutions into centres with only 200 places each, says a report published by the Department of Health. Care is currently concentrated in three special hospitals - Ashworth, Broadmoor, and Rampton - run by the Special Hospitals Service Authority. Recent reports into the quality of care in these hospitals, which together house nearly 1700 patients, have supported allegations of improper care and ill treatment. An inquiry into standards of care in Ashworth Hospital in 1992 made 90 recommendations for improvements, and its chairman, Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, wrote to the health secretary questioning the need for special hospitals. This report, …