Cyril Lee with a portrait of his late wife Dorothy. 3/2/5PENSIONER Cyril Lee has slammed proposals to modernise mental health services in south Wiltshire as "totally impracticable", and warns of serious problems ahead caused by a shortage of nursing home beds.

Mr Lee (81) has personal experience of caring for an elderly person with a mental illness - an experience he has relived for the Journal.

He has also experienced the problems facing carers, when nursing and care homes refuse to offer a bed to a patient who requires respite care - and he has written to the south Wiltshire primary care trust, highlighting his concerns.

Mr Lee, who lives in the Salisbury area, said he was deeply concerned at proposals in the trust's consultative document to reduce the number of inpatient beds for older adults at the Fountain Way hospital, Salisbury, by almost 50 per cent.

He said, by implication, this would drastically reduce the length of stay for patients in the Amblescroft North unit, a building opened just 18 months ago for inpatient services for older mental health patients.

Mr Lee said: "My wife Dorothy developed Alzheimer's Disease at the age of 72.

"She was cared for at home by me for the next five-and-a-half years and, during this time, spent several short periods in respite care, as a fully self-funding patient.

"The care/nursing homes so involved all reported that they would not offer her further respite breaks because, they said, she was too demanding on staff resources.

"Three months after the last rejection, her condition was such that she was made the subject of a Section 2 Order and detained in the Fisherton Unit.

"There, she sustained injuries in a bad fall, adding to an existing condition of angina, a deep-vein thrombosis, and suffering other conditions and infections."

After about 18 months in the hospital unit and in failing health, Mrs Lee's relatives were informed by new senior management that she was to be discharged.

Mr Lee said: "In spite of impassioned pleas from the relatives about the inhumanity of moving a very sick person to an unfamiliar environment, my wife was transferred to Glenside Manor EMI Nursing Home.

"In just 70 days, she was dead.

"I now understand that Glenside will no longer take such patients. Therefore, where is it proposed that such a patient should be cared for?

"I fear that to say 'in the private sector' is nonsense. Understandably, they will always 'pick and choose'."

Mr Lee, whose wife died in October 2003, told the Journal: "The trust seems obsessed with treating patients in the community, but there are times when such treatment is inappropriate."

He said he shared others' concerns that there were insufficient nursing and care home places in south Wiltshire to meet demand and is also concerned that more and more nursing homes are refusing to accept elderly mentally ill patients.

"Where will they all go?" he asks.