Health trust staff are heroes

I am a previous employee of the trust and a former colleague of Dr Blandford, and I can say the trust is made up of an incredibly compassionate, hard-working and conscientious staff team.

I am concerned about the unnecessary anxiety Dr Blandford’s comments will have caused both service- users and their carers.

I have direct experience of the challenges within the trust of establishing new services and confronting antiquated or inappropriate practice. It isn’t easy, but it is possible and worth the effort.

Throughout my employment, from 2002-2008, I was impressed with the quality of care provided to the service-users and their families/carers by a very hard working and competent staff group.

I, myself, was directly affected by the consultation process within the forensic service that resulted in my being downgraded to avoid redundancy.

I don’t think the trust handled that process in a particularly compassionate or person-centred way and, therefore, have every reason to feel embittered.

However, what really struck me throughout all of that difficult time was how the staff team across the service worked its socks off to ensure the service-users were well cared for and were able to voice their experiences.

In addition, the staff team supported and encouraged me to make the transition and reinstate my confidence to take on the new challenges.

There are certainly imperfections within the organisation of the trust, but if everyone took the approach adopted by Dr Blandford nothing would ever change.

It is easy to stand by and do nothing and then complain about it later. But the real heroes of the people are the staff, service-users and carers involved with south Essex, who work hard to ensure excellent quality of care for service users, and the protection of the public.

Louise Coates
Consultant forensic psychologist
Previous head of forensic psychology
South Essex Partnership University