For day two of Advocacy Awareness Week 2022, our Independent Mental Health Advocacy (IMHA) team have an example of their work. They talk about working with professionals to ensure the right to be safe from inhuman or degrading treatment is being met.
Refreshing to see professionals understanding, collaborating, and promoting use of Independent Mental Health Advocates to uphold rights.
“Following an incident of poor practice from ward staff to ward patients, the ward manager raised their concerns to the clinical operations manager. Here, the clinical operations manager approached the IMHA and asked them to speak to patients and encouraged them to make formal complaints against staff on the ward due to their treatment on the ward.
“The advocate spoke to three service users and supported two to write letters of complaint expressing concern about how they had been made to wait to collect their takeaway from reception by staff.
“One client said they were regularly made to wait to leave the ward for their Section 17 leave as staff were slow to return from their “protected time” and sometimes made them wait to do things such as washing clothes for no apparent reason.
“The issue of the takeaway has now been resolved and the takeaway is now delivered later in the evening so there is no conflict with the staff’s “protected time”.”
