Foundation is business!

Published: 22 April, 2010

• IT would be hard not to agree with the sentiments expressed by Sanjay Shah (Health trust has callously dumped patients and staff, Letters, April 15). 
Camden & Islington NHS Foundation Trust does not see itself primarily as an organisation to look after ill and vulnerable people with mental health problems but rather as a business to make money and increase the salaries of its directors and managers. 
Why else would it have a director of corporate development and a marketing manager? 
Most people would feel that the latter post is completely irrelevant since mental health care is all too often forced on people and not sold to them.
What does the board of this trust actually know about mental health?
None of its non-executive directors are either health professionals or admit to having used the mental health services. 
Yet they are agreeing to cut back on the service provision. 
One person who commissions mental health services for the local authority and the NHS earns nearly £100,000 a year. Another who oversees their provision by the foundation trust earns even more. They would no doubt claim that they are rewarded for reducing costs when the truth seems to be that they are rewarded for cutting services. 
While they increase their pay packets, it is the vulnerable and mentally ill who lose out.
SHENAL JAMES
Lamble Street, NW5