Inspectors attack failing Broadmoor
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Your support makes all the difference.Broadmoor, Britain's most high-profile psychiatric hospital, will be branded as "unsuitable" for providing psychiatric care in a damning official report this week. The report will also say that many patients are deprived of privacy on dirty wards lacking even the most basic amenities.
In its first report into the high-security hospital, the Government's health watchdog, the Commission for Health Improvement (CHI), is expected to say that many wards at the hospital are "unsuitable for modern mental health delivery".
The CHI report will also recommend that the current redevelopment of the Broadmoor site, run by West London Mental Health Trust, be completed urgently.
The Independent on Sunday, which has been campaigning for more than a year for better treatment for people suffering from mental health problems, has argued that Broadmoor is unsuitable for many of the patients currently held there.
Although notorious as the home of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, the hospital also houses many less serious offenders and some who have never committed a crime.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that women patients had reported incidents of sexual harassment and abuse in the late 1990s. Julia Wassell, the hospital's former head of women's services, was dismissed after reporting the allegations to managers.
Cliff Prior, chief executive of Rethink, a charity working for people with severe mental illness, said: "It is astonishing that Broadmoor, along with the other high-security facilities, has swallowed a disproportionate amount of the new money in mental health and still ended up being condemned by the Government's own inspectors."
Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, a solicitor who has acted for patients at Broadmoor, saidthat the "excessive" security measures contravened human rights laws.
"Broadmoor should be closed down. It is no longer an asylum - it's moving closer to a hospital prison," said Ms Scott-Moncrieff.
Broadmoor last night declined to comment.
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