‘More than 1,000 sexual assaults have been reported on mixed-sex NHS mental health wards in the last three years, figures show.
There were 1,019 reports of alleged sexual assaults between men and women in England from April 2017 to October 2019.
Although trusts report following policies on single-sex accommodation, men and women in mental health units still mix in communal areas or in overloaded wards.
The data was given by 47 out of a total 56 mental health trusts in an investigation by medical news website the Health Service Journal.
It revealed that, of the abuse reports, 491 were considered serious enough for staff to refer them to safeguarding services, while just 104 were reported to the police.
All NHS hospitals are expected to keep patients in same-sex accommodation ‘except where it is in the overall best interest of the patient’, the NHS says.
But busy wards which have big workloads or uneven numbers of patients are not always able to stick to the rules.
All are required to report ‘breaches’ in which mixed-sex patients are kept together without good reason.
Between October 2018 and October 2019 there were 21,624 of these breaches across England, including in mental wards and normal hospitals.
And patients inevitably mix with those of the opposite sex in communal areas such as gardens, lounge areas and corridors.’
