Social Affairs Correspondent
A secure hospital ward for people with complex learning disabilities is to be closed within weeks, leaving families struggling to arrange suitable care for vulnerable patients, the has learned.
The ward at Woodland View Hospital, in Ayrshire, is to shut on 14 July after health chiefs said it had “fallen short of our standards and expectations”.
Experts told the it was “nonsensical” to close a ward at such short notice and hospital transitions of this kind usually take a minimum of three to six months.
Andrew Malcolm, who has fought to get his 21-year-old son Fraser out of the hospital for four years, said it was not possible to get a suitable care package in place so quickly.
“None of the care providers can react in that time, it’s not safe, it is not ethical,” he said.
Woodland View, near Irvine, is a 206-bedroom mental health facility and community hospital which was built in 2016.
Ward 7A is an eight-bed unit that provides assessment and treatment for patients who have complex health care needs, often associated with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.
Fraser, from West Kilbride in North Ayrshire, is one of six patients who will have to leave the ward when it closes on 14 July.
He went into the unit in 2021 for a 12-week assessment because he was struggling to regulate his behaviour.
His parents have been trying to get him out of the hospital and into suitable care since.
Doctors said he was ready to leave the ward three years ago but no package of support was agreed.
His parents have now received a letter from the health board telling them the ward will close within weeks.
Caroline Cameron, director of North Ayrshire Health and Social Care Partnership, said the ward was an increasingly unsuitable physical environment and there had been “incidences of violence and aggression”.
She said they had struggled to recruit and retain staff and there had been challenges moving patients out to more appropriate community settings.
“Despite a focused and intensive support over a period of time, the challenges in Ward 7A have not improved and it is no longer suitable for patients to remain there,” she said.
Fraser has limited speech and complex needs but his parents says that before he went into hospital he lived a full life.
He attended a special school, regularly went sailing and on holiday with his family and was helping his dad renovate a sailing boat.
His mother Karen said: “People go into hospital to get made better, not worse – and Fraser’s so much worse now than he was when he went in there.”
His parents have raised a number of safety concerns about his care.
Earlier this year Fraser was hospitalised after swallowing the handle of a spoon.
However, his dad Andrew told Scotland that complex cases like Fraser’s need a proper transition plan.
He said: “You can’t have somebody locked in hospital who’s now de-skilled, profoundly deaf, non-verbal, and just told they are free to go home.”
Consultant clinical psychologist Prof Andy McDonnell told the the proposal to move Fraser with four weeks’ notice was “nonsensical”.
He said a plan to put him with agency workers until a care team can be recruited was “insane” because to a patient they are just “a bunch of strangers”.
Prof McDonnell, who is a director of Studio Three, a company which specialises in transitioning people with complex needs out of hospital, said the proposals on offer for Fraser had all the hallmarks of a “botched transition”, with a high likelihood of people getting injured.
He said transitioning people with autism, who are often suffering from complex trauma or PTSD as well, needed to be very carefully planned.
“In my experience, the first year can be quite rocky for a lot of people,” Prof McDonnell said.
Lawyer Claire Currie, who represents the Malcolm family, said the timeframe for the ward closure was “unprecedented”.
She said: “I am aware that some of the patients have not left the ward in months, if not years.
“Sadly, they consider that environment their home.
“I am very concerned for any individuals who may be suddenly moved without transition planning or proper preparation.”
In early 2022 ministers pledged that by March 2024 significantly fewer people with learning disabilities will be stuck far from home or in hospitals. A pledge they didn’t meet.
The Scottish government set up a register of those with learning disabilities stuck in hospital or inappropriate out of area placements in an effort to move people on from institutional care.
The latest figures show 1,264 people are on register with 318 classified as urgent.
Of those there were 157 people in hospital, of which 74 were classified as a delayed discharge.
Mental Wellbeing Minister Tom Arthur said: “I am sorry to hear of this difficult situation and can fully understand the stress that it is causing to the patients and their families.
“I understand that the decision to close the ward has been taken as a result of continuing and escalating concerns about the sustainability of service delivery in the ward.”
He said the health board was working together with the patients and their guardians to ensure robust transition plans are in place.
