Allowances for psychiatric hospital patients
The Minister says patients may retain some welfare income, and hospitals provide allowances for work or to patients without income; he is reviewing differing practices to standardise them.
asked the Minister for Health the plans, if any, to subsidise the cost of small luxury items purchased by long stay patients in psychiatric hospitals.
Comment on this
Patients in psychiatric hospitals in receipt of social welfare allowances are permitted to retain portion of such income for their own use. Health boards also pay allowances to patients in such hospitals for work done as part of rehabilitation and industrial therapy. Allowances are also paid to non-working patients with no income of their own.
The practice as regards payment of these allowances varies between the health boards and following a recent discussion which I have had with representatives of the psychiatric nurses I am examining the matter with a view to having a more standard approach.