Barnet Survivors Fight to keep Centres open

Barnet Survivors Fight to keep Centres open

For over a year (from 1998 to 1999), groups of survivors in the London Borough of Barnet were up in arms about plans to "modernise" local mental health services. These plans threatened to close two Day Centres: Broadfields in Edgware and Station Road in Hendon.
Many of the survivors – especially at Broadfields are elders. Campaigner John Sharkey said "You are talking about elderly people who have been here a long time. They know the place. They don't want to go anywhere else." And Gladys O'Keefe said "We're like one big happy family, we don't want to be split up." Users pointed out that some of them used to live in Napsbury Hospital (a big asylum now closing) and that Day Centres were all they had now.

User/survivors from Broadfields have mounted a year-long letter campaign and the decision to close or relocate services has been put back again and again – probably as a result. Several times the issue has featured as headlines in local papers. Survivors have addressed the Council in session twice.
In 1998 the Social Services committee said that mental health was too important to be a party political issue and if there were to be changes then they wanted a cross-party consensus. As a result of user activism, the Minority Party dissented and backed the users. It was a very close vote and although the changes were just got through, the Minority Party said that they would take it to Full Council so that over fifty councillors would have chance to vote on the issue.
The campaign which went on throughout last year reached something of a peak in April 1999 when upwards of 50 users picketed the Town Hall. Then several addressed a packed Social Affairs Committee Meeting which had convened especially to discuss this issue. Joy Levy included a poem written in response to a suicide of a close friend.

Update: Survivors mounted a concerted local campaign. This was well-received by the press and local people. The Council backed down a little way and decided to keep one of the centres (the smaller) open - Station Road, but to press ahead with the closure of Broadfields.

Protesters gather outside Barnet Town Hall

Survivors hold up plackards