Rampton Secure Hospital

Rampton Secure Hospital
Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust
Geography
Location	Retford, Nottinghamshire, England, United Kingdom
Organisation
Care system	Public NHS
Type	Specialist
Services
Emergency department	No Accident & Emergency
Beds	about 370
Speciality	Psychiatric hospital (secure mental hospital)
History
Opened	1912
Links
Website	http://www.nottinghamshirehealthcare.nhs.uk Trust
Lists	Hospitals in England

Rampton Secure Hospital is a high secure psychiatric hospital in the village of Woodbeck between Retford and Rampton in Nottinghamshire, England.

Background

The hospital houses about 400 patients who have been detained under the Mental Health Act 1983 under one of these classifications:

• Mental illness
• Psychopathic (personality) disorder
• (Severe) mental impairment, which is the legal term for what would now be called learning disability.

Rampton Hospital provides a national service for patients with a learning disability, Deaf male patients and women requiring high secure care. It also provides services for men suffering from mental illness and personality disorder. The Hospital is also a pilot site for a service caring for men with a severe and dangerous personailty disorder.

About a quarter of the patients have had no significant contact with the criminal justice system, but have been detained under the Mental Health Act and are considered to require treatment in conditions of high security owing to their "dangerous, violent or criminal propensities". Others have been convicted of an offence by the courts and either ordered to be detained in hospital or subsequently transferred there from prison.

It has a staff of about 1900.

History

In former times the area which is now the hospital was occupied by open land called "Rampton Field", which was a big common.

Rampton Hospital was built in 1912 as an overflow hospital for Broadmoor Hospital in Kent.

On Tuesday 22 May 1979 Yorkshire Television showed a program "Rampton, The Secret Hospital", which was a severe exposé of mistreatment of Rampton patients by staff; it is listed in a "top ten" of television programs which caused serious effects, and it got an International Emmy. A follow-up television report a few weeks later said that its effect within Rampton Hospital was a few scapegoat prosecutions, and things continuing as before except that no staff member could trust another staff member not to be an informer.

Around the 1980's the open ground between its gate and the nearest hospital buildings have been built-over with a housing estate for its staff.

In February 2000 Rampton Hospital was awarded the prestigious Charter Mark award. This recognises quality in public services and is the government scheme designed to both reward excellence and encourage constant quality improvement. It is very much focused on the quality of the service provided to users; in Rampton Hospital this included not only patients but also visitors and the general public.

In April 2001 Rampton Hospital became part of the new Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust. The Trust provides mental health and learning disability services including:

• Community forensic service to Nottinghamshire
• Medium secure services provided by Arnold Lodge and Wathwood Hospital to patients from the Trent region
• A high secure service at Rampton Hospital for all NHS regions

A.I.M. (Artists In Mind)

Many patients who could benefit from being able to use their time in creative activities whilst in hospital find a lack of opportunity is available. It is alleged that this is due to imbalance between in the hospital's priorites: in mental hospitals generally, attention to providing adequate treatment is sacrificed to the overriding concern with security.

The community arts charity A.I.M. (Artists In Mind), based in Huddersfield, Yorkshire was first established in a partnership between Rampton Hospital and Leeds University.

Currently, in 2006, two groups of patients in Rampton Hospital, one female group and one male group (only single-sex interaction is permitted) have been working on a sculpture project facilitated by A.I.M. founder John Holt, and overseen by two nationally-acclaimed artists, the Holmfirth sculptor Brendan Hesmondhalgh and Blackburn-based sculptor Halima Cassell. This is intended to produce new site-specific works that will enhance the hospital environment.

With regard to the artwork of patients at Rampton and other mental institutions, an A.I.M. spokesperson has voiced concerns that "patients' work is often confiscated, destroyed, obstructed, and/or denigrated by hospital establishments. This is seen to hinder the creative and spiritual processes of development and healing. It is also disempowering to patients that they can have little or no intellectual property rights over their work, although much of their artwork would be valued highly in a contemporary art scene which regards so-called Outsider Art as a collectible and trendy commodity, and, more seriously, as exploring areas of the human psyche which few people ever experience to such extremes." Template:GBthumb

Notable patients of Rampton Hospital

• Beverley Allitt
• Ian Huntley

Location

It is situated 2.3 km = 1.4 miles WSW of Rampton village at at Ordnance Survey grid reference SK 775 776 GB Grid. Map at this link.

See also

Broadmoor and Ashworth are two other high-security mental hospitals in England and Wales. The Carstairs state hospital is the equivalent facility for Scotland and Northern Ireland.

A.I.M., the Huddersfield-based arts charity which works with Rampton's patients and other survivors of spiritual and emotional crisis.

External links

• A.I.M. (Artists In Mind)