I Have Wasted My Day.

Today (8/9/11) was possibly going to be the date of the second multi-disciplinary team meeting about my grandmother. Although this was only ever an un-firm commitment I spent the day on stand by just in case. In the end it didn't happen so apart from cleaning the bathroom I completely wasted my afternoon.

This evening I met up with my mother for the first time since her recent wedding. As my mother's house is literally across the road from the hospital I first dropped in to visit my grandmother on my own. I found her to be calm, lucid and able to remember details about my mother's wedding and my various cousins. However just before I left she did fall due to severe muscle wastage in her legs.

As muscular-skeletal medicine is not only my mother's area of professional expertise but in my grandmother's case literally her department my grandmother's case obviously came up in conversation. This means that some of the secret is now out so I might as well tell everyone;

My grandmother's condition fulfills the criteria laid out in Section 3 of the Mental Health Act 1983. Therefore Section 3 should now be active. This in turn activates Section 114 of the same act which puts the local health authority/primary care trust under a legal obligation to both plan and fully fund aftercare which in my grandmother's case will mean a stay of indeterminate length in a residential facility specialising the care of elderly patients with mental health problems. However the local health authority/primary care trust are still trying to weasel out of their obligation by classifying my grandmother's case under the Health and Social Care Act 2001 which means she has to plan and pay for her own aftercare. What we are now considering are ways to compel the local health authority/primary care trust to activate Section 3 of the Mental Health Act 1983.

There are numerous ways to do this including the various criminal offences committed in the course of my grandmother's treatment. However while my grandmother's treatment has been extremely bad the practice of mis-classifying the cases of elderly patients is so widespread within the local health authority/primary care trust they seem unaware of how to properly classify them. Therefore I think the best solution would be for the Secretary of State for Health to impose an intervention order that would strip the local health authority/primary care trust of it's legal status and make health care in the Borough the responsibility of central government until such a time as the staff who have been behaving improperly can be replaced and proper procedures can be put in place.

Apart from stuff about weddings and riots my mother and I also discussed how my sister recently had to be admitted to hospital in Guilford suffering from heart failure due to her care team's refusal to treat a life threatening medical condition. She is now stable and out of hospital but I think that's another casualty we're going to have to chalk up to the Bristol Abuse Case.