A mental health charity has been ordered to pay £50,000 for failing to protect a graduate who was stabbed to death by a paranoid schizophrenic.
Mental Health Matters’ employee was found in Ronald Dixon's Newcastle home in 2006. The Sunderland-based charity admitted health and safety breaches and was fined £30,000, with £20,000 costs.
“Although the care sector has done much to improve the safety of its workers over the last 30 years, this incident and associated fine will remind care organisations that their communications, risk assessments and procedures must be clear and effective,” says Tim Cooke, chartered psychologist with violence reduction specialist Maybo.
"It is important to keep this need in perspective. The vast majority of violent crime is not committed by people with mental illness and people with severe mental illness are themselves at risk from the wider public. So they deserve confident and effective support.
He adds: “To achieve this, care charities and organisations should re-visit their risk assessment and importantly make sure something is being done about high risk areas. In particular they need to ensure good practice is followed through, especially for lone workers, and that client history is known to carers in direct contact with potentially dangerous individuals.
“Training and support should enable carers to make safe choices in advance of and during a risky situation. An important skill is the dynamic risk assessment which enables early retreat where appropriate and possible. “