Care firm criticised for promoting "exciting" prison self-harm incidents

The UK’s largest private healthcare provider has been criticised after one of its senior executives spoke of the “exciting life of prison medical staff” in reference to life-threatening injuries and self-harm.

Dr Sarah Bromley, Care UK’s national medical director for health in justice, said in a staff recruitment video: “If you like life to be exciting, there are always alarm bells going off, resuscitations, self-harming incidents, a lot of chaos that goes on in our prisons.”

The remarks, which have been criticised as ill-judged and offensive, come at a time when suicides and self-harm rates are at a record high in prisons in England and Wales.

Care UK is the UK’s largest independent provider of health and social care services. Its health and justice arm provides healthcare in 30 prisons in England and Wales, including some of the biggest.

It provides healthcare in HMP Leeds, which has seen five apparently self-inflicted deaths in the last year. At Chelmsford prison, where it also operates, an inspection report published this week said health provision was inadequate. Inspectors said self-harm levels were “very high, far higher than at comparator prisons.”

This month a coroner said “significant failures” by Care UK had contributed to the death of a prisoner at Pentonville jail in London. Terence Adams, 43, killed himself at the prison last November. Mary Hassell, the senior coroner for inner north London, found medical staff did not take immediate action after Adams’ admission to the jail despite recording a “high risk of self-harm”.

Adams had been deemed at risk on a mental health assessment, which should have triggered an immediate admission to in-patient care at the jail. Instead he was placed in a normal cell. He killed himself three days later.

The coroner also said a report compiled by Care UK after the death was not shared with the coroner’s office until it was accidentally discovered by lawyers during the inquest.

Also this month, the Ministry of Justice published a bulletin on deaths, self-harm and assaults in prisons. In the 12 months from June 2015 there were 105 apparently self-inflicted deaths, a 28% increase on the previous year, and 34,586 reported incidents of self-harm, up 27%.

Deborah Coles, the director of Inquest, which supports relatives of people who die in custody, said Bromley’s remarks were offensive to the hundreds of families the charity had represented over the years.

Coles expressed concern that the comments demonstrated a lack of understanding of the vulnerability of prisoners and the staff who work with them.

“If this is the premise in which staff are recruited to work in some of the most challenging prisons, it is not hard to imagine the quality of training Care UK staff receive,” she said.

“The evidence from prison inspectors and the coroner earlier this month is alarming. When will the government stop prioritising profit over quality of service and look at how these private providers are operating on the ground?”

A Care UK spokesman said: “The video seeks to explain to healthcare professionals the difficulties, but also the opportunity, of providing complex multi-disciplinary care to vulnerable people, who often have had limited access to healthcare in the past, within what is inevitably a challenging environment.

“Whilst seeking to describe the nature of the role and environment appropriately, we are of course sensitive to the perceptions of everyone connected to prison healthcare and we will review our recruitment material accordingly.”

After the Guardian contacted Care UK about the recruitment video, the company edited the film, removing Bromley’s reference to excitement, resuscitations, and self-harm.

Care firm criticised for promoting "exciting" prison self-harm incidents