A government minister has agreed to meet the family of a 15-year-old boy who has autism and believes he is in prison after being sectioned and placed in a secure psychiatric unit for six months.
Matthew Garnett, who has autism, ADHD and an anxiety condition, has been held in a short-term mental health treatment unit in Woking, Surrey, since he attacked his parents in September. His family said this was the only option available at the time but added that it was not giving him the necessary specialist care for his condition.
“His chances of recovery are diminishing every day that the NHS fails to provide him with the appropriate care he urgently needs,” his mother, Isabelle Garnett, said in a statement. “What I was promised would be a six-week pit stop has become a six-month jail sentence.”
Alistair Burt, the community and social care minister, has agreed to meet the Garnetts next Tuesday, the Department of Health confirmed on Friday.
The petition has gained 300,000 signatures and considerable media coverage. Holly Willoughby, who spoke to Matthew’s parents about his case on the ITV daytime show This Morning, later tweeted:
Hi @AlistairBurtMP I know your busy, but would love you to come on @itvthismorning tomorrow to discuss #autisticprison #makeroomformatthew
— Holly Willoughby (@hollywills) March 7, 2016
Hi Holly. I'm in touch with Matthew's local MP to discuss further with family - but not able to discuss publicly. https://t.co/gAxCIq7zP0
— Alistair Burt (@AlistairBurtMP) March 7, 2016
Matthew is due to be transferred to St Andrew’s healthcare, a specialist unit in Northampton, but he has yet to be moved. Robin Garnett, his father, has said: “The fact he’s going there is not in dispute, it’s just that the beds are blocked.”
Matthew, detained under the Mental Health Act, does not understand why he has been kept in a psychiatric intensive care unit (Picu) and thinks he is in prison. His parents say this has further affected his mental health.
Earlier this week, Robin Garnett spoke in an interview about his son’s stay in a secure mental health unit. “Our assumption was that was a temporary holding measure, probably for a matter of days, weeks at most,” he said.
He described Matthew as “a hulking 15-year-old young adult, but he sees the world like a five-year-old”, explaining that being in the secure psychiatric unit was deeply distressing to the teenager. “The only way he can make sense of a building he doesn’t want to be in, with the doors locked, is as a prison. He sees it as a punishment for what he did six months ago,” he said.
The family has yet to receive an explanation from health service officials for the delay in his transfer, said Mr Garnett, adding that the family could only make the four-hour round trip to visit Matthew from their south London home once or twice a week.
