{"id":389386,"date":"2026-01-03T17:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T17:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/389386\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T17:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T17:14:08","slug":"patient-at-oldham-mental-health-unit-told-to-stop-crying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/389386\/","title":{"rendered":"Patient at Oldham mental health unit told to &#8216;stop crying&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Patients on the Harben ward, a high dependency rehabilitation ward for women with seven patients, told inspectors they &#8220;did not feel safe&#8221; and that staff &#8220;seemed too busy to talk&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Staff responses to patients &#8220;were not always helpful&#8221;, they said, with one employee recorded as telling a distressed patient &#8220;stop crying, you are making me sad&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In the Baldock ward, which provides acute treatment to up to 16 women, and the 12-bed Billington ward, staff were not keeping track of food and fluid intake properly, and some were put on observation shifts for longer than recommended.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Two of the seven patients the inspectors spoke to said staff did not respond quickly when they were distressed or needed help, and another said she waited more than three hours to be taken on her leave.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Three patients said staff treated them well and behaved appropriately towards them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The safety of our patients is our highest priority, and we take the delivery of safe care extremely seriously,&#8221; said Jennifer Healey, Cygnet Kenney House hospital manager.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Our comprehensive improvement plan had a particular focus on managing ligature risks, strengthening medicines management, and enhancing staff training.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Patients on the Harben ward, a high dependency rehabilitation ward for women with seven patients, told inspectors they&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[64,63,137,514,515],"class_list":{"0":"post-389386","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}