This story was first published in digitalhealth.net
Alleged sexual assault on mixed NHS wards revealed
New figures show that more than 1,000 sexual assaults have been reported on mixed-sex NHS mental health wards in the last three years.
The data was given by 47 out of a total 56 mental health trusts in an investigation by medical news website the Health Service Journal. It reveals that there were 1,019 reports of alleged sexual assaults between men and women in England from April 2017 to October 2019. Of the abuse reports, 491 were considered serious enough for staff to refer them to safeguarding services, while just 104 were reported to the police.
Although trusts report following policies on single-sex accommodation, men and women in mental health units still mix in communal areas or in overloaded wards. All organisations are required to report 'breaches' in which mixed-sex patients are kept together without good reason.
Between October 2018 and October 2019 there were 21,624 of these breaches across England, including in mental wards and normal hospitals.
A Government-ordered review published in December 2018 recommended that the Government 'tighten' its definition of single-sex accommodation to ensure wards were 'genuinely' single sex.
A spokesman for the charity Mind said: "For many people, the reason they are being supported in a mental health setting is because they have experienced sexual assault. They should be able to expect that they won't be re-traumatised by their environment. This is why these wards have no place in a modern healthcare system.
"It is also not good enough for wards to be meeting the technical definition of a single-sex space, knowing that people continue to be endangered. If national guidance does not offer sufficient protection for people, then services must go above and beyond it to sufficiently protect people when they may be at their most vulnerable."
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