After the last 14 years, mental health services are on their knees. Nowhere is this felt more starkly than in West Cumbria, where we have some of the highest suicide rates in the country and an urgent crisis in access to mental health support.
We need more mental health professionals, more early intervention services to stop people reaching crisis point and enough acute inpatient beds for those who need them.
Before the election I called for a new community mental health hub in West Cumbria and I’m delighted that one will open this year in Whitehaven. This will be a 24/7 service anyone can access without a referral which will provide a range of support services from both the NHS and community organisations. It is really exciting and we should celebrate it.
However, this should be an addition to and not a replacement for existing services.
Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust, which runs mental health services in Cumbria and across the North East, is proposing to close the Yewdale Ward at West Cumberland Hospital. This is the only inpatient acute mental health ward in West Cumbria. Its 16 beds are almost always full. The trust proposes to replace this provision with more beds at its Carleton Clinic in Carlisle and four short term beds at the new community hub in Whitehaven. Four beds in the whole of West Cumbria. Everyone else will have to travel an hour to Carlisle.
I’m up for a conversation about switching focus from acute to community care, but we first have to have the community care in place and proven to work. Any reduction in acute inpatient beds should only be considered at a time when these beds are not needed as a result of improvements to early intervention, with fewer people reaching crisis point.
The onus is now on the mental health trust to release detailed plans for how they will improve mental health services in West Cumbria showing how they will get us to this point. Until then, I’m calling on them to call off the closure.
Residents can support my campaign at joshmacalister.uk/yewdale and join our Facebook group ‘West Cumbria Mental Health Action Group’.
Register to attend my public meeting on health services in West Cumbria
Josh MacAlister MP 