Monthly Archives: May 2021

Secret Ways To Get Discharged From Section

There are a million pages online about getting discharged from section, including from charities like Mind. But they all give you the official lines – Hospital Managers’ Hearing, Tribunal etc etc. What they won’t tell you about are these*:

  1. Flawed sectioning papers

    Ask for the original sectioning paperwork. If there’s a mistake in there, the sectioning may not be valid.

    For example, if the name of the previous hospital was not properly filled in, or the current hospital’s name is abbreviated or misspelled, or there is some other flaw (consult a lawyer), you may have a good case.

    Tip: Walk into the hospital fully prepared with all the paperwork, and a lawyer, and demand the patient be allowed to leave “right now”. Don’t disclose the flaw to the hospital or they will quickly go and correct the error or get emergency Section 5(2) powers to hold the patient for 72 hours while they correct the paperwork!

    (See also #4 below)

  2. Make a nuisance of yourself

    One of the founders of this site made such a nuisance of himself to Rhodes Wood Hospital that the management were tied up in red tape, key staff were unable to function, the RC got “stress” and went on long sick leave, the local council’s enforcement division launched action against the hospital for planning violations, there were multiple fitness to practise cases at the NMC, the GMC and social work England….

    Eventually, the hospital caved. They changed his daughter’s primary diagnosis from anorexia to EUPD so they could do an emergency discharge just to get rid of him. He’s willing to talk with any other parents of patients in Rhodes Wood Hospital to explain how he went about it. Use our contact page to provide your details for him to contact you.

    Which brings us to ….

  3. Change of diagnosis

    If you can achieve a change of primary diagnosis from anorexia to something else, a hospital that’s getting paid for treating an Eating Disorder now has no more reason to hold that patient and will want them discharged (or transferred elsewhere, be careful of this!).

  4. Abscond

    No, seriously. What happens if you take the patient on leave and do not return?

    One parent who did this reports that the hospital threatened to get the police involved to come to the house and force the patient back to hospital. The reality with the police, however, seems to be different. Most police forces are reluctant to do anything unless there is an immediate danger to the patient or to others.

    In this case, the police did nothing and the hospital got more and more demanding but the parent held firm. The hospital gave up in the end and discharged the patient after some weeks.

    What about medication? The parent who did a successful abscond reports that the hospital sent the medication over to the house while the patient was AWOL.

*We are not lawyers. Always consult a lawyer before following any advice on this page.

What ideas / suggestions do YOU have? How did YOU get your section discharged?

Considering a job at Rhodes Wood?

If you’ve landed on this page you’ve probably clicked on an ad of ours targeted at individuals considering employment in Rhodes Wood Hospital. Welcome!

Prior to taking up a job at Rhodes Wood, we highly recommend you do some research on this place and what current employees have to say. We believe that the combination of CQC’s Inadequate rating for this hospital (since 2019), a lot of vacancies, and stories of hospitals like Milestones being shut down for lack of staff, don’t bode well for Rhodes Wood Hospital.

Current Jobs May 2021

Eating Disorder Support Worker

Mental Health Nurse

Consultant Psychiatrist

But that is not all, they’ve got PLENTY of other jobs as staff are regularly leaving.

They’re looking for a therapist to cover Nadine da Cal going on maternity leave (from June 2021):

They need at least one psychiatrist given that Dr Josh went in Jan and Dr Wiseman is leaving soon (and who knows how long Dr Ogunboye and Dr Fenton will last!).

They need to replace Panni, the maintenance guy.

But they also need nurses, support workers, admin staff, housekeeping staff, dieticians, chefs and catering assistants, housekeepers …everyone seems to be leaving! Here are some ads from the last 30 days:

This is a different ad to the previous one for a MH nurse which was offering £30K – £37K

Bear in mind that this is a TINY hospital with about a couple of dozen patients. So you need to ask yourself why they have so many vacancies. You can see the latest list of vacancies here if you search for keyword Rhodes Wood.

Why are they so desperately in need of staff? They’ve got job ads all over the place. In addition to the two locations from which the above examples were taken, they’ve got ads on Monster (example), NHS Jobs (example), Melga (example), Talent.com, TotalJobs (example), Simply Hired (example) , TES (example) and other locations.


Read what other employees of Elysium Healthcare have said

At Indeed.com

Read what patients and their parents have to say

User Feedback

But the benefits sound great?!

They’ll talk about a “friendly, committed and established CAMHS Mental Health service”. They are established, well, Elysium Healthcare has been around since 2016. But committed? Depends on what you mean. The owners have squeezed this hospital (and others) for as much money as they could and they’ve put the whole group up for sale. Yes, it’s currently up for sale.

They’ll talk about the job being “enjoyable and rewarding”. You’ll be overworked and unpaid according to so many reviews at various job sites. There are also many complaints about bullying, stress, all sorts.

They’ll talk about a Welcome bonus, CPD packages, free massage at work, 33 days off plus your birthday. Yeah, your birthday as well! That’s how caring they are. Except that you need to speak with a current employee or two who’ll tell you what it’s really like. We can arrange that if you wish. The employee will talk with you anonymously; simply use our contact page to get in touch and provide your name and email address.

Safety, Security & Safeguarding

We parents have numerous examples of serious lapses in safety. Yes, yes, we could take them to the CQC. We have. In these Covid times, CQC simply pass the complaint to the hospital and tell them to do something. There seems to be no follow up, no action.

Some of these children are suicidal and are on 1:1 observation with at least one staff member meant to be watching them at all times. There have been numerous occasions when staff members have been fast asleep when meant to be watching these high risk patients! One parent reports at least 3 such recent incidents of staff being asleep. That’s just ONE parent’s report.

Most of the night staff are agency staff. They’re there for the day and not too fussed about doing the job properly. Most don’t know HOW to do the job.

Numerous parents have reported to us about staff being asleep on duty. To Rhodes Wood’s credit they do take action when given the name of the staff member and do not hire that agency staff member again. However, that does not solve the problem as there’s always another “sleeper” who could be on duty tomorrow.

One patient reports that a night time agency staff member actually asked her, “Do you mind if I shut my eyes for a few minutes?”!

Fobs

Staff members have fobs that are needed to open all the secure doors, including the gate in the video here. These fobs are meant to be on their person at all times, but they often take them off and leave them about.

This is a irresistible temptation for many patients who attempt to grab these fobs and do a runner. They don’t get very far, as staff do catch them and restrain them. But that’s unnecessary trauma for patients who are already in a very bad place.

Gates

The main gate to the secure area is what the below video is about. This gate is meant to be always shut. The parent who took this video (also on Youtube) claims that he was waiting at the gate for 15-20 minutes before shutting the gate to secure the premises. He says it’s not the first or second time he’s seen this lax security.

Fortunately, no patient noticed the open gate and attempted to make a run for it.

Staged Photos of Rhodes Wood Hospital

While researching Rhodes Wood Hospital you may come across the below photos and be very impressed by the clean, comfortable look.

That is NOT how the hospital looks now! It’s gone downhill considerably.

These photos were taken when the place was new and recently decorated. That was a long time ago. Go visit the hospital today and you won’t recognise it as the same place pictured here.

Employees – Email to employees on 02/05/2021

Employees’ home page.

Below is the content of the email sent out to employees on 02/05/21


TO ALL CURRENT AND EX-STAFF OF RHODES WOOD HOSPITAL

We are a group of ex-patients and parents who are extremely concerned about serious failings at Rhodes Wood Hospital and are considering a variety of legal and other actions against the hospital.

This notice comes to bring you information that is extremely important to you as an employee. Please read it in full.

1. Are you aware that for many employees at Rhodes Wood, including doctors and nurses, it is your legal responsibility to report to the CQC or other authority any safeguarding or other failures and risks you see at RWH? Reporting such infractions is called whistleblowing and it’s not something that you have an option on doing. You are failing in your moral duty towards patients, and breaking the law, if you do not report such matters.

2. Whistleblowing is protected by law: The Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA) 1998 provides protection to “workers” making disclosures in the public interest and allows such individuals to claim compensation for victimisation following such disclosures. If your employer does come to know about your whistleblowing actions they cannot let this adversely affect your employment i.e. they cannot take it out on you.

3. There are a wide range of matters you can report on, it’s not just safeguarding failures. Whistleblowing also covers a report you may file when someone’s health or safety is at risk (or likely to be at risk). It even covers situations where a colleague is covering up some such risk. Do you know of any such occasion/s at RWH? It is your legal duty to report it.

4. What if you’ve got less than 2 years’ service? Normally, the law makes it easier to terminate the contract of an employee who has less than two years’ service. However, if you’re a known whistleblower, Elysium can’t terminate your services easily and you obtain the equivalent of “protected characteristics”. From here: “…where there is a valid whistleblowing claim, length of service is not a bar to bringing a claim in an Employment Tribunal and there is no statutory cap on damages that can be awarded, as there is in ordinary unfair dismissal cases”.

5. If your employer does terminate your service for whistleblowing, you can claim financial compensation. There are several examples online of whistleblowers who have won hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation for just this. You can get a higher compensation award if you are dismissed after whistleblowing than before. With whistleblowing compensation claims, there is no maximum limit to the award! In the case of Small v Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust, an agency worker was awarded £54,126 when he blew the whistle after two months working at the trust.

6. Employees can claim under unfair dismissal, but what if you’re an agency worker? You can make a detriment claim instead (including “for being given harder or mundane work; demeaning or humiliating comments being made; insignificant issues about conduct being unduly highlighted; the way in which grievances and disciplinary issues are handled so the employer is not taking them seriously” etc).

7. You can take your complaint to the CQC, but you cannot post it online in social media or blogs. However, the CQC is not the only place you can report these things. You could also, in some cases, report them elsewhere, even to the press (however, you do need to be careful to not violate patient confidentiality when disclosing to the press). The CQC do, however, have a useful PDF guide to whistleblowing. Note that the CQC cannot provide you legal advice nor assist with an employment tribunal. But we can provide this help for free (see details at the end of this email).

Have you been a victim of bullying, intimidation, discrimination of any kind by your employers or colleagues at Rhodes Wood Hospital? Have you been witness to your employers breaking the law? Are you aware of other employees/colleagues/management who have not followed the rule book and/or put patients at risk? You have a legal duty to report a wide range of incidents.

Elysium have already lost at least one case when a whistle blowing employee suffered “detriment” i.e. the hospital treated him differently for having made a complaint. The law gives you a lot of protection as a whistle blower.

We have raised significant funds to compensate RWH employees who are willing to turn whistleblower. Our initial plan was to pay a £10,000 reward for information leading to the closure or RW Hospital. However, our lawyers have advised us that it is not currently legal to provide financial incentives for someone to blow the whistle. Instead, we are using the funds to help RWH whistleblowers get the legal advice and compensation they deserve. We cannot pay you directly but if you do want to share with us any information about the hospital violating any law or taking any safeguarding risks, we would be most grateful as we might be able to use that in our own action/s against Elysium. You can disclose information to us through our lawyers who will also ensure that no patient confidentiality is breached.

Our lawyers are already helping one of your colleagues and we invite you to seek our lawyers’ assistance if you, too, have something to disclose to the authorities. All such legal advice you receive will be funded by us. We do not ask for a cut of any compensation you’re awarded from Elysium Healthcare.

How it works:

– If you want to avail of our legal firm’s help in a whistleblowing matter, simply write to this email address (but make sure you write from a private gmail / outlook / hotmail type address and not your work address) – rhodes.wood.hatfield@gmail.com

– We do not wish to know your name or your identity so please do not disclose these details when you contact us;

– Our lawyers, however, will need to take your name and other details as they have a legal responsibility to do this. They will also verify your employment status at RWH. Note though that it will all be under a confidentiality agreement and they will not be at liberty to disclose those details to us;

– Our lawyers will pass your concerns / reports to the relevant authorities. They will also answer any questions you have about whistleblowing and advise around the subject.

– You will be charged no fees for this legal advice.

Note that any further emails we send to staff at RWH will come from a different email address (just in case Elysium block our gmail address).

Please pass the contents of this email to any colleagues of yours who have not received a copy. It will also be available on our website: Or go straight to our Employee Information Page which we will keep updated with news about our campaign that is of importance to you.

RWH Parent Action Group