Families left 'scrambling' after Woodland View secure ward announces decision to close within weeks

A secure hospital ward for people with complex learning disabilities in North Ayrshire is set to close within weeks, leaving vulnerable patients and their families scrambling to make alternative arrangements.

The local health and social care partnership (HSCP) has decided to permanently close Ward 7A at Woodland View hospital from July 14 after the care within the ward “fell far short of standards and expectations”.

The 206-bedroom mental health facility and community hospital near Irvine was built in 2016, and Ward 7A is an eight-bed unit that provides assessment and treatment for patients who have complex learning disabilities and complex mental health needs, often associated with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.

The ward has experienced “significant challenges” for several years, according to partnership director Caroline Cameron.

“These challenges are mainly due to delays in discharge for patients to move to more appropriate community settings, an increasingly unsuitable physical environment for our patients, recruitment and retention of staff, and incidences of violence and aggression in the ward,” Ms Cameron said.

“Despite the commitment of our dedicated staff group and clinical team, the care within Ward 7A, Woodland View, has fallen far short of our standards and expectations.

“The challenges in Ward 7A have not improved and it is no longer suitable for patients to remain there.”

The decision, announced to families and carers just one month before the ward’s date of closure, has left families scrambling to find appropriate alternative accommodation.

‘They’ve taken my son’s basic human rights’

Fraser Malcolm, who has been in the hospital for four years, is one of the Ward 7A patients who will be impacted.

Fraser, now 21, has limited speech and a rare chromosomal condition that affects one out of 85,000 to 100,000 males.

Before he was sectioned, Karen Malcolm, Fraser’s mum, described him as a “very sociable wee person” who was active in the sailing community, well-known at the local horse stables, and “the heart and soul of the party” on family occasions.

The problems started during the Covid lockdowns when 17-year-old Fraser couldn’t see family or loved ones and didn’t get to do the things he enjoyed.

“We’d reached out to social work quite a few times to ask for help, and their solution was to phone the police,” Karen said.

“Fraser was taken away from home on March 9 by police to Woodland View hospital. We were told he was there for a six-to-12-week assessment. He is still there to this day.”

Andrew and Karen have been fighting to get their son out of Woodland View for the past four years.

They have a litany of complaints and concerns about the facility and how they’ve treated Fraser since he was sectioned.

Andrew Malcolm, Fraser’s dad, said they have raised multiple concerns and asked “awkward questions” about his treatment in the facility over the years, but said they have been “shut out”.

They say they have only been able to see their son from a window for a year.

“We haven’t been in Fraser’s room for a year now,” Andrew said.

“We used to hold the NHS in high regard, but I have to say our experience of the HSCP is absolutely shocking.

“You go to hospitals to make people better, but Fraser is considerably worse.”

Andrew said the hospital has “taken away Fraser’s basic human rights”.

“He’s profoundly deaf; he wears hearing aids, but in Woodland View, he doesn’t. They took his hearing aids off of him because on one occasion he put his hearing aids in his mouth.

“He’s doing it because there’s nothing else to do. His room has nothing in it. He has no TV, no nothing.

“They’ve put film up on his window so he can’t see out. He’s in a prison cell.

“He’s in there, doesn’t know what’s happening, can’t hear, can’t talk, and he comes to his own conclusions about what’s happening and what’s not happening. He’s a very angry, confused young man who needs his family there, and his family’s been excluded.

“The whole thing is just staggering. It’s going back to the dark ages of institutions. Woodland View is an institution in a modern building. Fraser, along with six other individuals, is stuck in there.”

‘We have to compress a 12-week discharge plan into eight days’

Andrew and Karen said they were finally making progress towards getting Fraser out of Woodland View and into his own house when they received a letter from the partnership, on June 13, warning them that the ward would be closing in four weeks.

They had assembled a care team and put together a “robust 12-week discharge plan” to help Fraser transition.

They said that it has all been taken away with the abrupt closure of the facility.

“We now have to compress a 12-week discharge plan into eight days,” Andrew said.

The letter said Woodland View would work with families and patients to find “an alternative placement or another hospital facility where they can receive care as close to home as possible”.

While Fraser’s family is “ecstatic” that he’s finally leaving the facility, they are extremely concerned about the short timeframe and a lack of transition.

“We want to get Fraser out and keep him out. And that can be done, but not in what is now eight days,” Andrew said.

“The whole thing disgusts me. It makes me really, really angry that we’re in this situation.

“I don’t think we’ve slept since we heard the news. We’re so concerned about how he’s going to react to this.

“I’m hoping something [registers] with him that ‘this is better’. We’re clinging to the idea that anything is better than where he is now.

“We’re elated he’s coming out of hospital, we’re ecstatic. But he has to stay out of hospital. Without the transition, there’s a high risk he may not.”

‘The situation is not ideal’

In a follow-up response to the Malcolms, the partnership recognised that the “situation and timescales are not ideal to support a perfect discharge from hospital, but on a balance of risk, there is no option for Ward 7A to remain open beyond July 14”.

Ms Cameron added that the patients in Ward 7A are “all delayed discharges whose medical input and treatment has ended.”

“These patients are not being cared for in the most appropriate place to meet their health and care needs,” she said.

She said the partnership is “committed to ensuring that people are only in hospital for as long as they require assessment and treatment”.

“Discussions are ongoing with patients, their guardians, staff, and other healthcare professionals, including other NHS Boards and local authorities, to make sure robust discharge plans are in place and implemented.”