The family of a man who was killed with his own guitar in a New South Wales psychiatric hospital are planning to sue the NSW Government for negligence.
Joe Gumley, 47, died at Shellharbour Hospital on the NSW south coast in July this year after he was allegedly attacked by a fellow psychiatric patient.
Paul Hindmarsh, 31, is charged with his murder and had been sharing a room with Mr Gumley at the Eloura West facility at the time of his death.
The legal action comes after a damning internal NSW Health Department report revealed staff had not checked on the pair in lead-up to the killing.
A 19-page report, obtained by the ABC, found that while staff told investigators they had checked on Mr Gumley, the CCTV footage showed no-one had been near the pair for almost five hours.
Mr Gumley was supposed to be checked every 30 minutes.
Steve Gumley believes staff at the hospital were not looking after his brother properly when he was killed.
“They weren’t checking them. Why? … Were they out having a few beers out the back? Having a cigarette or what?” he said.
“Have they been doing it for years? We don’t know. Have they been diddling the books to say yes we’ve been checking when they haven’t?”
Investigators were told it was common practice to sign off for sighting a patient when this had not occurred.
“Staff interviewed provided a number of reasons why care-level observations are not attended, including fear of aggression, time constraints and at night waking patients which then often necessitated having to sedate the patients,” the report read.
It said staff allowed the guitar in the ward as a form of rehabilitation and as a human gesture but “became desensitised to the ongoing risk posed by the guitar being on the unit in terms of it being a potential weapon in an environment where patient behaviour could be unpredictable”.
Mr Gumley’s mother Betty said her son loved his guitar and music.
“He lived for it, and it was a beautiful guitar, geez it was lovely,” she said.
Patients had limited access to mental health therapies: report
Investigators also found no model of care existed for the Eloura West unit and that patients had limited access to social work, psychology and therapies.
It was also revealed that the unit lost its dedicated psychiatrist in a restructure at the start of this year.
Local health district chief executive Margot Mains offered her sincere condolences to both of the patients’ families.
“I acknowledge that this incident is entirely unacceptable and we have taken this matter extremely seriously,” she said.
“We would like to reassure our mental health consumers, their families, their carers that whilst this incident is very tragic and awful it is a rare event.”
Ms Mains said a major review of the systems and protocols at the Eloura West mental health facility would be undertaken immediately with the help of newly-appointed NSW chief psychiatrist Dr Murray Wright.
The Gumley family said that is not good enough.
“I just don’t want to see it happen again. It’s not fair to the families. It’s hard,” Mr Gumley said.