Tom deserves much more

Published: 4th November, 2010

• MAY I remind Richard Arthur (Camden and Islington NHS Foundation) that Tom Costello is not a “service user,” he is a human being. 

It is this kind of robotic and bureaucratic approach that has seen Tom taken from his home, family and community, against their wishes and desire to care for him. 

Tom has a wonderful support network, willing to care for him in his own home. 

Let us remind ourselves this is a man of deep conviction who has spent most of his life fighting the causes of others. 

The subject of mental illness is a sad and complex one. How the health authority can possibly believe they are helping him by placing him hundreds of miles away from family and friends is beyond comprehension. This kind of treatment only adds to his confusion and unhappiness and places a far greater burden on his family. 

The medical approach taken has done nothing but heap more misery on Tom and his family. 

After serving the people of Camden for so many years, the kind of treatment Camden and Islington NHS Foundation now offer him is morally reprehensible. 

Sadly the authorities concerned seem to be beyond reproach but I, along with many, many others, will back the campaign to bring Tom back home to his family and community. 

This is one fight we all owe it to Tom to battle on his behalf. 
Lorraine Ashard
Queens Crescent, NW5

Our debt to a fighter

• AS someone who lives just round the corner from Tom Costello I should like to say how grateful I am to him and the people he campaigned with to save our houses in Somers Town. 

His campaign had the large houses on the corner of Penryn Street and Medburn Street listed. As a result the rest of the houses in this particular area are still standing. These early Victorian houses are a historic legacy and are loved by the people fortunate enough to live here. In the 21st century they are now unique. 

A decision was made by Tom and the people living here to have shared rather than individual gardens. These shared gardens enable people to get to know each other and support each other.

Tom has had a long history of helping other people. It is now Tom’s turn to be helped. 

Tom has numerous friends and family who can arrange to help him have a chance of a normal life aided when necessary by a visiting health worker.

Bring Tom home to the place that he knows and where he is known and loved.
Angela Inglis, NW1

Best care?

• IN his letter (Decision is not financial, October 28), Richard Arthur, chair of the Camden & Islington NHS Foundation Trust, claims that “our aim is the best possible care for a service user”. 

No one else seems to agree that this is what has happened in the case of Tom Costello who has been moved to Northampton when it is clear that he would be happier and better cared for in his home community in Somers Town.  

Mr Arthur claims to have sympathy for the distress that is being caused to Tom and his family and friends but he certainly seems to lack compassion and empathy.

It also seems to be contradictory to the arguments that this same foundation trust advances for wishing to close more in-patient beds, that it provides excellent community mental-health services.  

If it does, as Mr Arthur says, actually cost £500 per day to keep Tom in Northampton, this would surely be better spent on providing the best possible home care and support from those community services.  

It seems that this trust is failing in its responsibility to Tom.  

I wonder how many other patients are in a similar position.
David Brown
Haverstock Hill, NW3

Individuals

• RICHARD Arthur, (Letters, October 28) wrote: “You have featured the move of a service user to Northampton.”

This adoption of the term “service user” which, while particularly rampant in the health service is increasingly used elsewhere, is dehumanising and uncaring, especially when used as a device to avoid mentioning Mr Costello (in this case) by name.

Any service which blinds itself to the fact that it is dealing with individuals who each have a name and families and friends will always run the risk of failing to reassure us that it is on our side rather than the side of the administrators and bureaucrats.

So please will Mr Arthur and his chums on other local quangos that are supposed to be acting in our interest do just that and start using our names and thinking of us as human beings rather than as service users, customers or consumers. 

I accept this may not alter the medical opinion of what is best for Mr Costello but it might remove the suspicion that such decisions are taken in the interests of the health service rather than the interests of an individual such as Tom.
Cllr Andrew Mennear
Conservative, Frognal & Fitzjohns ward

Bed watch

• THE New Journal and Tom Foot are to be congratulated for revealing the scandal of the Camden & Islington NHS Foundation Trust’s claims that it has plenty of empty beds yet sending patients far away from home.

This can hardly be good for the recovery which this trust claims to be so committed to. 

It is not noted for responding to criticism.  

This time it is clear that even those within the organisation have been caused to stop and think since they have withdrawn the consultation which they launched. 

The best outcome would be that the proposals to close these needed beds are gone for ever. 

It seems unlikely that this will be the case and that the trust will wait until the present furore has died down before it starts again to claim it doesn’t need all its beds. 

We will need to be continuously vigilant to ensure that this does not happen.
Sheila Laws
Lawn Road, NW3