A protest bringing together around fifty people at very short notice took place outside Manchester Central Library on Thursday, 29 September. This was following an undercover BBC investigation that revealed abuse inside the Edenfield Centre in north Manchester. This was widely reported in the local press and nationally. The undercover reporter was employed as a healthcare support worker, and covertly filmed patients being restrained, sworn at, humiliated, and placed in seclusion.
There were banners from Unison and from the Manchester Users Network, from which Alan Hartman and Paul Reed spoke at the protest. The Tory MP Christian Wakeford (who jumped ship to join Labour after being elected), whose constituency includes Edenfield, also spoke, calling for a public inquiry.
The Manchester Central Library protest was organised by CHARM (Communities for Holistic Accessible Rights-based Mental health). CHARM was set up precisely to combat the attempts to condense mental health care in Manchester into a massive new facility in the north of the city. Park House Hospital in Crumpsall will not only imprison patients in a new unit which is cut off from the local community but also ‘treat’ patients from across Manchester.
Full story here
Source: Anticapitalist Resistance, 30/09/2022
CHARM 