A dementia patient was moved SEVEN times for treatment in just over 12 months.
Allan Hayes now often sits and cries when wife Pauline goes to visit.
Mrs Hayes is now calling for better facilities for sufferers in Leeds as she is furious that he was moved from a purpose-built unit because of a reorganisation of care plans.
Mrs Hayes told the Yorkshire Evening Post: “He’s had seven moves since last June. It’s wrong – he needs to be settled.”
Mr Hayes, 73, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2006.
The couple, who have been together for 41 years, have four children, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren between them.
Until last year Mrs Hayes cared for her husband at home but he was taken into a mental health in-patient facility The Mount, near Leeds city centre, last June.
After several weeks, Mr Hayes was able to return home, but then had to go into hospital after developing a water infection.
Following that he was transferred to an assessment bed in a care home, back into hospital, then a different care home and most recently he was sectioned under the Mental Health Act for the third time and moved to Asket Croft in Seacroft.
Mrs Hayes said the facility, which was purpose-built for dementia patients, was ideal to meet his needs.
But in early August he was moved again, back to The Mount.
This was because Leeds and York Partnerships NHS Foundation Trust, which provides mental health care in Leeds, had decided to centralise in-patient dementia services there as part of a plan to create a ‘centre of excellence for older people’.
However, Mrs Hayes, from Chapel Allerton, Leeds, says though the care provided is brilliant, the facilities are not as good.
And she questioned the judgment of moving patients away from a specially-built facility.
“The Mount does not have the lovely facilities that this purpose-built building had,” she said.
“Alzheimer’s is on the rise and they have a purpose-built building.
“I want to know why they are closing these places but then re-opening them to someone else.”
The Mount includes a newly-opened sensory garden which Mrs Hayes said patients could have difficulty accessing, though the mental health trust said a new swipe card system would make this easier.
She said it was devastating to see her husband, previously a “gentleman”, become a different person because of the disease.
“It’s terrible. I know he’s safe at The Mount but it’s only a stopping-off place,” said Mrs Hayes.
“Even last year he would say ‘I know it’s hard for you’’.
“Then this plateau drops and their mind just goes.
“It’s a horrible, nasty illness.”
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