The government has told the families of the Nottingham attack victim that it will delay mental health reforms following a damning report into the treatment of Valdo Kallokane in the years before the murder.
Dr Sanjoy Kumar, whose daughter Grace O’Malley Kumar was one of the three people killed in the attack, said the health minister had told families that mental health reforms would be delayed.
“Health Minister Wes Streeting has promised to delay changes to the Mental Health Act,” Kumar told Sky News on Tuesday. “He has promised he can work with the people who are working on the legislation. Change is needed. We need to pause for a moment and really look at what is safe for the public.”
In the King’s Speech in July, the government revealed plans to “modernise” mental health law which applies in England and Wales, giving patients “greater choice, autonomy, rights and support”.
The bill also included plans to amend detention standards so that people can only be detained under the law if they pose a risk of serious harm, and to shorten detention periods.
The government also said it would “give patients a stronger voice” by giving legal weight to their right to be involved in their treatment plans and to make choices or object.
“We want to get the mental health law right,” Kumar said, “and it’s not about taking away people’s freedom.”
“This is about holding accountable clinicians who put these people out on the street,” he said. “Psychiatrists who put dangerous people out on the street should be held accountable for putting that patient out without a comprehensive risk assessment. We sincerely hope to be able to work collaboratively with Wes Streeting, who certainly has the will and the intent to get this right.”
Streeting said he wanted to change the law in a way that “strikes the right balance, recognising that there are people who are currently able to live safely in their communities but whose freedoms are being taken away, while others need better and more rigorous oversight to ensure that people like Mr. Kalokane do not pose danger or death to others on the streets.”
Karokane, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, killed three people – O’Malley Kumar, Barnaby Webber and Ian Coates – in Nottingham in the early hours of June 13 last year, and also hit three pedestrians with a van, seriously injuring three others.
A Care Quality Commission (CQC) investigation into the mental health care Mr Kalokane received in the years before the murder found there was a “series of errors, omissions and misjudgments” in his treatment.
This included a risk assessment that “downplayed or omitted” important details such as the seriousness of the risk to others, and choosing not to administer his medication by depot injection, a sustained release medicine, because he himself had not taken it.
The CQC said Kalokane frequently refused to take his medication while at home and “showed little understanding or acceptance of his condition”.
The report criticised the doctors’ failure to assess whether Kalokane was in a position to make decisions about his own treatment, saying his psychotic symptoms “would have impaired their ability to assess the information regarding the need for antipsychotic treatment and the risks of withdrawing treatment”.
Kalokane refused Depo injections and treatment and frequently cancelled medical appointments.
Responding to the CQC report, Mr Streeting said: “I want to assure myself and the country that the failings identified in Nottinghamshire are not repeated elsewhere. I hope that the findings and recommendations of this report will be considered and applied across the country so that no other family has to go through the unimaginable suffering that the families of Barnaby, Grace and Ian are experiencing.”
