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	TX: 12.02.04 - REPORT INTO ROCKY BENNETTâ€™S DEATH CONDEMNS INSTITUTIONAL RACISM IN NHS â€“ PART 1 PRESENTER: JOHN WAITE

	THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE Âé¶¹Ô¼ÅÄ CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. WAITE The NHS is riddled with institutional racism and persistently fails to give patients from black and minority ethnic communities the services they need and deserve. Those are the findings of the Bennett Inquiry, which has just been published. In a withering analysis the report blames the Department of Health for failing to tackle what it calls this festering abscess which is a blot on the good name of the NHS. It makes 22 recommendations about how things must be improved, including calling for a new tsar to be appointed who would champion the needs of ethnic minorities and a comprehensive retraining of health service staff to make them more culturally sensitive. At the centre of the report is the tragic death of David Bennett, known as Rocky. A 38-year-old who was killed by being held face down on the floor for 28 minutes by at least four mental health nurses. It's a story we first investigated on Face the Facts a couple of years ago, a story which almost certainly wouldn't have come to the public's attention without the determination of Mr Bennett's family and in particular his sister Dr Joanna Bennett, who in the wake of Rocky's treatment retrained as a mental health professional herself. Well after the publication of the report this morning Dr Bennett had a meeting with Health Secretary John Reid. So how did it go? BENNETT Well I had a very positive meeting with Dr John Reid and also the mental health minister Rosie Winterton. They accept that there is an issue of racism within the mental health services and it appears or I would say they were very positive about accepting the inquiry's recommendations. They were very committed to developing an action plan to implement the recommendations and so I was very encouraged by that meeting. WAITE Now throughout the 15 years that your brother Rocky was in and out of hospital you were concerned, weren't you, that he wasn't being seen as a patient to be treated but more as a problem to be controlled through powerful drugs and in the end violent and fatal restraint. BENNETT Yes, that's correct. Right from the very beginning it was a huge struggle for my family to get Rocky the type of help that he really needed. And that was a pattern throughout his time in mental health services, the 18 years that he was ill, much of the emphasis during that 18 years was on medication, more medication and higher dosages of medication. WAITE So you have seen for yourself, have you, that black people in our mental institutions are routinely over-dosed, over-sectioned, over-restrained? BENNETT That's definitely the case and there's longstanding evidence to support that. This is the experience of black and minority ethnic people using mental health services. WAITE And this sort of reaction is based on purely a racist perception - that a black patient somehow presents more of a threat than a white one and so the action - to deal with them has to be far tougher? BENNETT Racism - the way in which it's expressed is the issue that we need to be concerned with. People are influenced by the attitudes that they have towards individuals, they're influenced by their stereotypical views of black people and I think it's those things that influence the type of decisions that are made about the care that people need. WAITE Now steeping yourself in all of this for these past few years hasn't that had a personal cost on you? BENNETT Well certainly it's had a personal cost - it's been five and a half years of continuous struggle, meetings and psychological distress at several points throughout that period of time. So of course it's had its personal cost in terms of my own psychological state at times and also in terms of my own physical health. WAITE And is there any sense of closure now that there's been this very detailed, very critical report which you say the Health Secretary has taken on board? BENNETT I think I can say that this is now closure of this phase. I believe there's still a lot of work to be done to ensure that the recommendations are acted on and I would imagine that I will continue to be involved in that in some way. But it's certainly a closure to the investigation and the inquiry and so on and I hope it will give me the opportunity to start to gain some closure for myself, personally, on a personal level. WAITE Now the report makes, I think, 22 recommendations, what did the Health Secretary - Dr Reid - tell you they were planning to do, which are they going to implement? BENNETT As I understand from our meeting Dr Reid voiced a commitment to accept all of the recommendations. There were some minor aspect of one or two of the recommendations that I think that they have issue with. But the essence of all the recommendations were accepted by Dr Reid. WAITE But on the specific issue of methods of control and restraint say, the report says that no one should be restrained in a prone position for more than three minutes, your brother was restrained for 28 minutes. Are you confident that your brother's tragedy won't be repeated? BENNETT I don't think anybody can be totally confident that somebody else will not die as a result of the use of control and restraint. I would hope that with the implementation of the recommendations any preventable deaths will be reduced, the number of those types of deaths will reduce. WAITE And if all this doesn't happen - these wide ranging recommendations, if they're not implemented, what will be the fate of black people and ethnic minorities in our mental institutions? BENNETT I believe we will continue to see tragedies such as my brother's and such as my family's with more deaths in psychiatric services and black people will continue to get a poor deal in mental health services generally. WAITE But this festering abscess, the report talks about, you think now that is about to be lanced and allowed to heal for the first time? BENNETT I can only hope that that will be the case. WAITE Dr Joanna Bennett. And later in the programme we'll be asking whether indeed the Bennett Report really will lead to changes in the way people from black and ethnic minority communities are treated by our mental health services, that'll be our discussion at around 12.30. Back to the Transcripts homepage Back to the You and Yours homepage The Âé¶¹Ô¼ÅÄ is not responsible for external websites

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