Public consultation Looms on Mental Health Cuts

12.54.50pm UTC (GMT +0000) Wed 31st Aug 2005

On Wednesday (31st August) the White House Community Centre in Hampton will host a formal public consultation meeting on the changes (i.e. cuts) proposed in mental health services, including the end of day hospital treatment at the Maddison Centre in Teddington.

MP Vincent Cable, who earlier in the summer raised with Tony Blair in Prime Ministers questions the financial crisis in the SW London Mental Health Trust, said: "the local community is being spun a line about how mental health services are being reconfigured and improved through reorganisation. The brutal truth is that there has been serious financial mismanagement and a large 'black hole' in the Trust's accounts which is being filled through cuts in services. The hope is that services, which are being provided at present by the NHS through the Maddison Centre, will be shuffled off onto the council, which runs the Mereway Centre. Unfortunately the council is also strapped for cash, so it is the patients and their carers who will be short changed".