Manchester mental health staff stage strike protesting against underfunding and staffing levels
Granada Reports journalist Anna Youssef reports on why staff are taking strike action
A group of mental health workers say they have been forced to take strike action because poor staffing levels and a lack of funding is putting live at risk.
Union members in the Early Intervention in Psychosis teams across Greater Manchester walked out for 24 hours on Wednesday, 16 October.
Dr. John Mulligan, a clinical psychologist, says action is essential now to prevent more avoidable deaths in Greater Manchester.
With a 60% above average need for mental health services in Manchester, staff say a lack of investment is "unsafe".
Professor Anandi Ramamurthy, co-founder of CHARM - a group for better holistic mental health services, says she feels her daughter, who was diagnosed with psychosis, was failed by the service when she was in need.
"I am delighted that early intervention workers are striking", she said. "I think its really important for people to remember that this is not about pay.
"They're not asking for things for themselves. They're saying that this service is unsafe and it's absolutely imperative that this situation changes before the crisis gets any worse."
The early-intervention workers, employed by Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (GMMH), are represented by UNISON and Unite.
The unions say they are taking action over what they claim is the Trust's failure to improve staffing levels, despite its previous commitment to seek new funding to address this.
A recent freedom of information (FOI) request revealed the North West's NHS hospital trusts spent £45m more on private mental health care beds in the past three years.
Senior staff have recently said that the service is "on its knees" and lives are being put at risk.
The additional stress on medical staff is putting a further strain on resources.
Former mental health nurse Karen Reissmann joined the picket, and said her friends still in the system say the situation is showing no signs of improvement.
In a statement the Department of Health and Social Care said: "People with mental health issues are not getting the support or care they deserve, which is why we will fix the broken system to ensure we give mental health the same attention and focus as physical health.
"We will start by recruiting 8,500 more mental health workers to cut waits for treatment, and will also reform the Mental Health Act, to ensure people with the most severe mental health conditions get better, more personalised care."
Dr. John Mulligan, a clinical psychologist and a representative for UNITE the Union, says action is essential now to prevent more avoidable deaths in Greater Manchester.
"What we believe its going to take to fix it is a large amount of immediate investment into the locality," he explains.
"Manchester is the poor cousin of England, and early intervention and secondary care services in Manchester are the poor cousins in Greater Manchester.
"We desperately need funding, we desperately need more staff to be able to do the preventative work that we want to do.
"We're caught in a vicious circle at the moment, where the very limited amount of money that we get in Manchester is split up between very needy and important stuff, and there's none left in the pot when it comes to preventative services like ourselves."
According to Professor Anandi Ramamurthy additional cash is not the only answer to the problem.
She feels that a total rethink of how the system works is needed: "Mental Health services definitely need more funding, but they need more than more funding.
"They need restructuring, we need a compassionate system, a compassionate culture in society or we are going to see more and more people in crisis."
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