Trapped in the ‘Special Hospital’: The Problems Encountered in the Pathway to Medium Secure Units

Everything moves on: referral trends to a leavers' group in a high secure hospital and trial leave progress of group graduates

“…When a high‐security hospital clinical team assesses a patient as ready for transfer, steps to facilitate a move will generally include negotiation with the proposed receiving service, staff from that service conducting an assessment of the patient's readiness for their service and, in the case of patients under restrictions on discharge, permission from the Ministry of Justice. All this means that, for the patients who are at the centre of these processes, there may be a long wait for transfer (Harty et al, ; Dolan et al, ; Tetley and Krishnan, ). Then, a receiving unit may make transfer conditional on further treatment completion, may be full and so only able to offer a waiting list place and the Ministry of Justice may require a long period of time to consider the application for transfer, or possibly refuse it on grounds of their perception of risk (Dolan and Shetty, ).…”