The case for cash chop

Published: 11th March, 2011

• THE cuts have required loss of funding for many worthy organisations. It seems highly questionable why Islington Borough User Group (iBUG), which has regularly been criticised in your columns, should go on receiving £43,000 a year in grants.

It should be tested against its role in protecting the rights of mental health patients and only that. If it fails in that role, it matters not that it serves as a fig-leaf for Islington Council and the mental health trust. It is not fit for purpose and should not be supported by the taxpayer.
E Hope
Corsica  Street, N5

• CORAL ward at Highgate Mental Health Centre is a 12-bedded, all-male psychiatric intensive care unit. Like intensive care units in general hospitals, its job is to look after patients who are most ill. This often means people who are highly disturbed and there are many incidents often responded to with injections of powerful anti-psychotic drugs like clozapine or olanzapine.

The patients in Coral ward are also the most vulnerable. It is important that in a unit like this one the highest levels of vigilance are maintained. Surely that is what Peter Jones and iBUG are there for. After all they are provided with office space on-site.

If Mr Jones and his colleagues at iBUG cannot do this then another group which is better at looking after the interests of patients should take over the role.
Danny Bloom
Tollington Park Road, N4