My dad was killed by a mentally ill stranger – we’re all let down by poor public services

WHEN my dad was killed by a mentally ill stranger in 2007 my world fell apart.

I’d been a journalist for the BBC and ITV for over 25 years — and even made films about people with serious mental illness.

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But I found it incredibly difficult to get any information from mental health services about what had happened to help me and my family cope.

That’s why I set up the Hundredfamilies charity to help the 100 to 120 families in the UK each year who lose loved ones to a killing by a person with serious mental illness.

These are not rare events. I’ve documented more than 2,000 such cases on our website.

Most people with mental illness are not violent. But some, unfortunately, can be dangerous, particularly when untreated.

All too often in the cases I see, seriously unwell people have either been unable, or unwilling, to get good care and treatment.

Some are deemed to have “capacity” to make bad decisions, some are excluded because they have a drug or alcohol problem, or are considered to be simply making “a lifestyle choice”.

The system doesn’t seem able to care for seriously unwell people who don’t think they are ill — like Valdo Calocane or the man who killed my dad.

I’ve lost count of the families who before a killing raised serious concerns about the mental deterioration of their relatives.

Over the past 30 years, there have been hundreds of inquiry reports after patient homicides.

All too often they uncover repeated problems in mental health care.

Typically, these include failure to assess and manage the risk properly; to plan care properly; monitor compliance with medication; listen to families and friends; treat drug problems; manage discharge appropriately; share information and work with other agencies.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these problems feature in the Care Quality Commission report into the Nottingham case, due to be published today.

The fact that these failings appear so regularly in reports suggests agencies aren’t learning.

It was very concerning that only a small part of the psychiatric evidence was mentioned in court when Calocane was sentenced. It was just accepted without, it seems, any discussion.

We need to know that public services are as safe as they can be to protect patients, their families and the public.

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