Patients in a new home

Press, 29 January 1988, Page 5

Patients in a new home

By

SARAH SANDS

Eight psychiatric patients from Sunnyside Hospital are settling well into their new home in Riccarton. The patients are the first group to be moved into the community under the hospital’s community psychiatric care programme. Dr Peter Cowley, the head of continuing management services at Sunnyside Hospital, said yesterday that the shift was working “extremely well.” “Both the staff and the patients are really feeling very positive and enthused by the whole thing. t “The local community

has been very positive in receiving this and has been forthcoming in its support. “Two more houses will be opened in the next few weeks. The first, in Bishopdale, would take 10 patients and would open in about two weeks,” he said. Patients and staff were already visiting the house to become familiar with it. “The other house, in Addington, would take about 14 residents and would open in another month or so,” said Dr Cowley. Patients in the houses are aged between 20 and 65 and have been in hospital from two to 15

years. “Most of the people who have had fairly short admissions have already moved into group homes. We are now looking at those who have been in hospital longer and are slightly more socially disabled. “Patients were carefully selected and assessed for their suitability for community houses," said Dr Cowley. “The public need have no anxiety about these patients. A lot of retraining of the patients occurs before they move into a house to make sure that it will work for them. “Three shifts provide 24 r hour nursing care and rodents are taught basic

living skills such as cooking and cleaning and also use community facilities in Riccar- ton.

“People are not just sitting around all day doing nothing,” said Dr Cowley.

Another three or four houses are planned for later this year. “We have still got quite a number of people within the hospital whose quality of life will be enhanced by supervised accommodation.”

About 120 patients from Sunnyside Hospital will be moved into the community in the next four years as part of the Canterbury Hospital Board’s service development plan for mental health sej&'ices.