Sheila is a lady in her late 50s who came to Heatherwood Court from a prison in England.

Sheila had a long history of mental health problems with multiple agency contact.

Sheila felt alienated and her life in the community was chaotic; being characterised by an escalating series of anti-social and criminal incidents including racially abusing local children, fire setting, threatening behaviour, and theft which resulted in her prison sentence and a subsequent restricted hospital order.

What did Sheila and her commissioners want to achieve?

• A thorough in-depth assessment of her condition
• Development of a treatment and rehabilitation plan
• To bring structure to her life
• To provide her with stability through continuity and quality of care
• To support behaviour change so that a conditional discharge could be considered
• To support her socialisation so that she could reintegrate back into the community

What did we do to achieve these goals?

After referral to Heatherwood Court, Sheila was fully assessed – including baseline and personality assessments – and her past medical records re-examined, which allowed the clinical team to establish a schizoaffective disorder diagnosis.

This diagnosis then allowed the team to create an appropriate, robust treatment and rehabilitation plan, which included:

• Review and optimisation of medication
• Schema Therapy
• Index Offense-related therapy
• Anger and emotion management lead by the Psychology team
• OT and nursing involved in Sheila’s rehabilitation, including use of community leaves – these being initially escorted, and then unescorted
• Co-producing safety and support plans in relation to future discharge

What were the outcomes for Sheila? 

Sheila was very resistive at every stage of her treatment. However, the consistency of care and environmental stability, which she had previously lacked, allowed Sheila to achieve all the goals set at her admission.

Sheila has since received a conditional discharge and moved to an open rehabilitation facility. This was very successfully managed by creating a robust transition plan, which included transition leaves and overnight leaves to build and establish a rapport with Sheila’s new team in England.

Sheila is now ready to take the next step in her rehabilitation, and is being helped to find a suitable independent living placement.