Mental health trust wants to shut Birmingham's Main House - C/C Molly Garboden 18/12/09
Consultations started today on the proposed closure of Birmingham's Main House, which runs an intensive residential therapeutic programme for people with a personality disorder.
The Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust is blaming a reduction in funded referrals, which has caused the service to lose money. The trust board says Main House should not be subsidised at the expense of other mental health services.
Before it makes a final decision, the trust is seeking views on the issue, which can be filed through its website
http://www.bsmhft.nhs.uk/our-services/m ... sultation/
The consultation opens today and will close on Wednesday 20 January. The board said that, if any proposals were put forward, it would be prepared to consider them before deciding the future of Main House.
The trust has said that, if the programme did shut, it would honour its contractual and clinical obligations to those residents in Main House. This could extend the unit's life until either late summer or early autumn 2010, depending on a clinical view around the therapeutic nature of the community.