THERE has been a dramatic reduction in the use of ‘dangerous’ restraint techniques on East Lancashire’s mental health wards in the last month.

According to recorded figures, face-down restraint was used on about five occasions at Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust in the first two weeks in March.

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That was well down on the previous year when the comparative to a fortnightly average in 2014 was 38.

It follows a Lancashire Telegraph investigation into the shocking extent to which face-down restraint and other restrictive practices have been used on the mental health wards at the Royal Blackburn and Burnley General hospitals.

A series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests pointed to a huge surge in cases last year, while a whistleblower said there were major ‘cultural problems’ on the East Lancashire wards.

The trust said the decision to ban face-down restraint, in line with national guidelines issued last April, was made on November 24.

But after an exhaustive email exchange, in which the trust refused requests for an interview with the relevant officer, it has been established the decision was halted on the inpatient wards in December.

This meant face-down restraint was reintroduced to the training programme, due to concerns the new training had not been through ‘governance processes’ and safe alternatives were not in place.

On December 24, the trust received the Telegraph’s FOI requests around its use of restraint, and the ban was then finally enforced on the inpatient wards in January.

There were 78 face-down restraint cases in December, which dropped to 51 in January and 30 in February, before another big drop in the first half of March.

The trust said the FOI requests did not prompt the final ban on face-down restraint.

Iain Harbison, violence reduction lead at Lancashire Care, added: “Conversations had been on-going amongst staff for several months prior to this regarding the need to remove the prone technique from practice, as per the directive from the Department of Health, which the Violence Reduction Advisory team have proactively worked to implement in the trust.

“While adult mental health was slightly behind the other networks who had progressed the roll out as planned, they have made good progress in implementing the changes.

“And I am confident that we have achieved this now and we have seen a real decline in its use across the trust from January.”