A SON has said his mother may still be alive today if mental health staff had been better at communicating.

Jacqueline Gulliford, below, was treated at Headington’s Warneford Hospital for depression but went missing in January, a week after she was discharged from their care.

Oxford Mail:

The Eynsham grandmother was found dead in a river near Cassington Mill two months later.

When the Worcester College accounts clerk disappeared, her family said they were disappointed Oxford Health had not given them more advice when she was released from hospital.

After a coroner said in July it was likely Mrs Gulliford had taken her own life, the family told the Oxford Mail they had not been informed that she was deemed a suicide risk.

Oxford Health, which runs the Headington hospital, has reviewed the case and made changes the family said could prevent similar tragedies. Son James Gulliford, 29, yesterday said: “At the inquest I felt a few shortcomings in the care were identified, especially over the lack of communication with the family, but more concerning I think is the lack of communication between the actual care-givers.”

But he said: “They say this has been fixed, if they had this in place when my mum was under their care, we imagine she would still be alive.”

He added: “So in conclusion they aren’t to blame but they could have done things better. As a family we are exhausted with the whole process and feel it’s time to start to try to move on and stop going over the whole events again with them.”

In a letter to Mrs Gulliford’s daughter Sarah, Oxford Health chief executive Stuart Bell said services had undergone significant change over the last eight months.

He said dedicated consultants and senior nurses had been introduced on each ward to deal with patients living at mental health hospitals.

The mental health boss also said there had been a move to seven-day shift patterns for staff teams working in the community.

Mr Bell said in the letter: “Whilst the meetings with you and the completed report cannot alter the tragic outcome, I would like to assure you that your concerns and the recommendations from this report have been treated seriously and already fed back to the clinical teams.”

When approached for a comment, Oxford Health refused to give any more information about what changes it had made to prevent similar cases from happening again.

But spokesman Alistair Duncan said: “We offer our condolences.

“In all such cases we conduct a thorough review to determine any lessons learned in order to reduce the likelihood of a recurrence and wherever possible to improve our services.”

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