A Catholic priest accused of helping his friend sexually abuse a girl did not realise she was being molested, Liverpool Crown Court has heard. Father Jeremiah McGrath allegedly gave money to William Adams, 38, a sex offender originally of Belfast, to buy gifts for a 12-year-old from Liverpool.
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Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust is the largest NHS trust in Wales, providing health services to half a million people in Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan. It also provides specialist health services – such as paediatric, renal, cardiac, neurological services and bone marrow transplantation – to patients from across Wales.
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The official figures state that one in four people will experience a mental health problem – experts put the true figure at closer to one in three. Statistically, at least, mental illness is as common as cancer.
Union leaders yesterday warned of a national strike in factories – including one in Wales – employing disabled people after a leaked document confirmed that plans have been drawn up to close a number of sites.
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The Welsh Assembly Government’s drug policy is failing to tackle the rise in blood borne virus infections, a social care charity has claimed. Turning Point wants the assembly government to do more to stop the spread of diseases like hepatitis C.
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Three years ago an official inquiry into the treatment of black people within Britain’s mental health services concluded that the system was riddled with institutional racism and blamed the Department of Health for ignoring what it called “this festering abscess…a blot upon the good name of the NHS”.
{mosimage}But now senior psychiatrists, some themselves from ethnic minorities, are hitting back, arguing that labelling psychiatric services as racist is both wrong and counter-productive. Professor Swaran Singh, a consultant based in Birmingham says, “the high rates of psychosis and the high rates of detention are not a result of racism”, he insists.
The experiences of black people in mental health services are undoubtedly shocking: black men up to 18 times more likely to be diagnosed with psychotic illness than whites and four times more likely to find themselves locked up under the Mental Health Act. Understandably, for many within the black community the figures are powerful evidence that services are profoundly racist.
Professor Singh’s view has seen him accused of setting psychiatry back 20 years, but he is adamant. He says the term “institutional racism” damages the very people it purports to help and “is erroneous and too simplistic an explanation for ethnic differences. What it does is it creates a wall of mistrust between between service users and service providers.”
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The housing charity Shelter has condemned the industry minister for her comments on immigration and social housing. Margaret Hodge argued British families should be given precedence over immigrant families in the provision of social housing.
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Leading mental health campaigner Suman Fernando has refused to accept an OBE on the grounds that he disagrees with the government’s proposed mental health bill plans.
The decision to bring in ID cards for foreigners before bringing them in for Britons may lead to “de-facto racial profiling”, MPs and peers have warned. The Joint Committee on Human Rights says black and other ethnic minorities may “disproportionately” be asked to prove their UK immigration status.
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Council staff, charity workers and doctors will be obliged to tip off police about anyone they believe might commit a violent crime, under a Home Office plan revealed in a leaked document.
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