{"id":154916,"date":"2025-09-23T08:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T08:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/154916\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T08:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T08:07:08","slug":"bereaved-families-not-surprised-sussex-nhs-trust-ranked-third-worst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/154916\/","title":{"rendered":"Bereaved families ‘not surprised’ Sussex NHS trust ranked third worst"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n The Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (SPFT), which specialises in mental health and learning disabilities, was ranked 59th of 61 non-acute trusts across the UK in data published<\/a> by the Department for Health and Social Care recently.\n<\/p>\n

\n A group of families who believe their loved ones died by suicide \u201cbecause of failings in care from SPFT\u201d has been formed to highlight the themes they have seen across their cases.\n<\/p>\n

\n They have identified unprofessional behaviour, oversights in record keeping and a \u201ctoxic and harmful\u201d culture in the trust among the key learnings from their loved ones\u2019 inquests.\n<\/p>\n

\n Imogen Nunn died after ingesting a poisonous substance(Image: Family handout)\n<\/p>\n

\n Imogen Nunn died in Brighton, on New Year\u2019s Day 2023,<\/a> having struggled with her mental health since she was 13, her inquest concluded in May this year.\n<\/p>\n

\n Ms Nunn, who was born deaf, raised awareness of hearing and mental health issues on her social media accounts, which attracted more than 780,000 followers.\n<\/p>\n

\n Senior coroner Penelope Schofield concluded that \u201cthere was a failure by the mental health services to manage her risk\u201d after finding that SPFT practitioners did not review her care plan after a suicide attempt just three months before her death.\n<\/p>\n

\n The coroner also noted the service \u201cfailing to put in place safeguarding measures\u201d after being advised that Ms Nunn had accessed a pro-suicide website and purchased \u201cchemicals to use in suicide\u201d.\n<\/p>\n

\n Her mother, Louise Nunn, recently joined the bereaved families group and said it\u2019s \u201cnot only heart-breaking but alarmingly concerning\u201d to realise other families have been failed by SPFT.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cTo me it feels like our loved ones are just another number to them, and there needs to be more serious consequences to all those responsible for failing to fulfil their responsibilities,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n

\n Meadowfield Hospital in Worthing(Image: The Argus)\n<\/p>\n

\n Morgan Betchley, 19, was the mother of a one-year-old boy when she died through a self-inflicted injury on a ward at Meadowfield Hospital in Worthing on March 9 2023.\n<\/p>\n

\n She was autistic, and had struggled with her mental health for a long time and had been admitted and discharged from mental health units multiple times prior to her death.\n<\/p>\n

\n Her mother-in-law Louise Hodgson said her death followed six weeks of crisis where Ms Betchley had been \u201cgas-lit, brutalised and traumatised beyond despair\u201d during her care.\n<\/p>\n

\n At her inquest in November 2024, jurors concluded that evidence showed \u201crepeated failures to follow policies and procedures\u201d by staff at Meadowfield.\n<\/p>\n

\n They said: \u201cFailures relating to the admission process, understanding of existing diagnosis, risk management, record keeping, family involvement and discharge planning prevented Morgan from receiving access to services she needed at the time.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe consider it probable that if policies and procedures had been followed, Morgan would have benefited from a level of care more closely aligned to her complex needs,\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n They also noted a \u201cfailure to act professionally\u201d from some medical staff who refused to accept Ms Betchley\u2019s apology, following an incident where she had kicked out at a nurse during a psychotic episode.\n<\/p>\n

\n Ms Hodgson, who has worked in the NHS for 33 years, told the PA news agency: \u201cThe Trust seems to be led, in terms of its toxic and harmful culture, by psychiatrists with very big voices, and very little notion of what trauma-led care means.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cLeadership and culture are always key, but time and again this trust responds to deaths with tick-box \u2018solutions\u2019 and continues to allow staff to exclude and dehumanise desperately ill young people, thus modelling that to junior staff.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Matty Sheldrick with their beloved dog Lola(Image: The Sheldrick family)\n<\/p>\n

\n Matty Sheldrick, 29, left A&E and hanged themselves in the grounds of Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton<\/a> having \u201clost all hope\u201d on November 4, and died on November 22 2022.\n<\/p>\n

\n Mx Sheldrick, a 29-year-old trans person who had ADHD and autism, \u201cfelt unwanted, othered and rejected\u201d after presenting to hospital in September 2022, his mother has said.\n<\/p>\n

\n After a 26-day stay, they were eventually discharged as there was no \u201csuitable\u201d bed for them.\n<\/p>\n

\n During their inquest, Mx Sheldrick\u2019s GP Dr Sam Hall from WellBN told the court there is a \u201cmassive gap\u201d in crisis provision relating to mental health.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThere is a gap people are falling into and I feel we\u2019re all just fighting fires trying to keep people safe,\u201d Dr Hall said.\n<\/p>\n

\n The doctor also highlighted that people who are trans and have neurodivergence are often misunderstood and misinterpreted.\n<\/p>\n

\n Mx Sheldrick\u2019s mother, Shelagh Sheldrick, said: \u201cA common theme with all families is the lack of care, kindness and compassion shown to our loved ones when in a mental health crisis.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n She added: \u201cI am not surprised and somewhat relieved to hear they have been ranked the bottom of the pile as this has to stop while lives continue to be unnecessarily lost.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Those rankings are determined by averaging the Trust\u2019s performance against a range of targets, such as reducing waiting times for treatment and for being seen in A&E departments, or improving ambulance response times.\n<\/p>\n

\n Charlotte Haworth Hird, who represented Ms Betchley\u2019s family during her inquest, noted a \u201cpattern of failures\u201d from the Trust, despite such a number of similar stories.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt is a sad reality that until SPFT are willing to recognise what is going wrong, to accept responsibility for that, and to make meaningful change, these deaths will continue to happen,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n

\n Dr Oliver Dale, chief medical officer at Sussex Partnership, said: \u201cWe are deeply sorry for the loss each of these families has experienced.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe are absolutely committed to learning and taking action to improve where it is needed. We are working very hard with our staff to make the necessary changes and provide the best quality care to patients that we can.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe new NHS league tables highlight areas of organisational performance where we need to improve. We are fully focused on doing this on behalf of the patients, carers, families and local communities we serve.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (SPFT), which specialises in mental health and learning disabilities, was ranked 59th…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-154916","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}