Category Archives: mental health

Norfolk and Suffolk mental health patients in beds miles from home

Up to 50 mental health patients in Norfolk and Suffolk had to be sent to other parts of England last week because of a shortage of beds and a shortfall in funding.

In June Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt criticised the “unacceptable” distances Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust (NSFT) patients had to travel for beds.

The NSFT said the trust was committed to cutting the use of out-of-area beds.

It cut the number from 34 to six by September, but it has gone up to 50.

Norfolk and Suffolk mental health cuts ‘devastating’

Norfolk and Suffolk’s NHS mental health services merged in 2012 and must save about £40m over four years

Funding cuts in Norfolk and Suffolk show the government is failing to put mental and physical health on an equal footing, campaigners say.

Mainstream hospitals in the two counties have seen budgets rise by 15% since 2010, while mental health service funding has fallen by 3%.

The Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk said the cuts were “devastating”.

Rising prices ‘hit poor the hardest’

  • by James Reed, Political Correspondent

A new report suggests thousands more people are living in absolute poverty than recorded by official figures.

Research by the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies argues that Government statistics fail to take into account the fact that the rising cost of living hits poorer families harder than those on higher incomes.

It found households with the lowest incomes have seen prices rise by 50 per cent in the last decade compared to 43 per cent for the wealthiest.

That translates into an extra 300,000 people in absolute poverty, the IFS says in research published by the York-based Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF).