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Triple prison
mental health staff, urges charity
May
29, 2008
by Angela Hussain
The number of
dedicated staff for prisoners diagnosed with a severe mental health
illness should be tripled. This will ensure they get an equivalent
level of service as patients in the community, states a new report.
The
Sainsbury
Centre For Mental Health investigated spending on prison mental
health care in England and Wales.
On average, a prison mental health inreach team has four staff,
stated its report entitled Short-Changed. But this should increase
to 12.
There
are more than 350 prison inreach workers in 102 prisons in England
and Wales. But only people diagnosed with a severe mental illness
can access them.
Around
4,700 prisoners receive inreach care and treatment. But eight out
of 10 (85%) of inreach team leaders say their teams are inadequately
staffed, states the report.
As many as 90% of 81,681 prisoners
have a diagnosed mental illness or substance abuse problem, the
government acknowledges.
Read
for yourself: Short-Changed, by
the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health
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