Retired staff from the high security state hospital Carstairs are being asked to come back to work and help solve their current staffing crisis. The hospital, which houses some of Scotland's most dangerous psychiatric patients, is experiencing a severe shortage as they are failing to attract new staff to work at the facility.
Whistleblowers have claimed the recruitment crisis is putting staff and patients at risk and claim an incident similar to the 1976 massacre is "on the cards".
A source said: "People who are retiring are being urged to tick the box on their forms to consider coming back. Some are retiring one week and back the next working part-time.
"Nobody blames them for this but they return with a different attitude, which includes less responsibility, work in different wards, no line manager and they don't pick up anywhere near as much work as they could, so it puts lots of pressure on the full-time staff to pick up the slack when they're already struggling."
Another whistleblower said: "The place is now so dangerous they think bringing in supplementary staff from retirees is going to help. It's crazy."
Last week we told how a librarian at the hospital was forced to help cover a shift on a ward. Staff told the Daily Record dieticians, psychologists and occupational therapists have also been drafted in to help out with ward deficits despite not being trained.
And just in the last few days hospital chiefs have been sending urgent appeals to employees looking for volunteers to cover shifts for as little as two hours. People on annual leave are also being encouraged to offer to work overtime.
They have also appealed for emergency on-call workers to help on patient escorts outside the hospital or providing back-up when other staff are unavailable.
A source said: "Other staff disciplines working in the wards to help fill the deficit is an accident waiting to happen. We keep being told there will never be an incident like what happened in 1976 but something like that or worse is on the cards. Management say that was then and we live in a different time now and that will never happen."
The whistleblower said the librarian was basically a tick on a sheet to make the numbers "look good." They said: "It was earlier this month. She was just considered part of the ward staff and expected to do what other staff do. She has no experience of ward working and if something had happened she wouldn't have been able to do anything."
Among the patients currently housed there is James Dunleavy, an “untreatable psychopath”, who killed his mum Philomena at his Edinburgh home in 2013 before cutting up her body and burying her in a shallow grave.
Another source said: "Patients are basically being left locked in their rooms which is not healthy for them at all. It creates stress and many of them cannot cope being locked up all day and night. It isn't prison but it's being treated as such."
Staff have blamed shift patterns for the failure to entice nursing staff to the hospital.
A source said: "It used to be four on and two off but some new starts can work a full seven days without any breaks as they don't get paid for them. The hospital is rural so many staff have to travel a fair distance to get there and coupled with the hours there is no work life balance. Even the promise of £4000 secure bonus payment isn't enough to entice new workers. It is not going to surprise anyone who works there if someone is seriously hurt, patient or staff member. Something needs to be done."
Killers Robert Mone and Thomas McCulloch went on a murderous rampage in the Lanarkshire facility in 1976 and left three people dead, including a nurse, patient and police officer. Mone, 27, and McCulloch, 26, broke out of the hospital after murdering nurse Neil McLellan, 46, and another inmate, 40-year-old double murderer Iain Simpson.
PC George Taylor and colleague PC John Gillies spotted two men standing on Carnwath Road on the outskirts of Carstairs, near to a car, and stopped to see if they could help. Both were brutally attacked by Mone and McCulloch. PC Gillies managed to escape and raise the alarm at a nearby house. PC Taylor, who was in a very serious condition and bleeding heavily, was rushed to nearby Law Hospital but died a short time later.
The two escapees then stole the police van, which they crashed 10 miles away near Biggar and tried to murder two other men. They were eventually caught in Cumbria.
A spokeswoman for Carstairs said: "Staff are able to ‘retire and return’ in line with national policy which has been in place for a number of years. This is not a new initiative."
Crime: Don't miss the latest Scottish crime and courts news from the Daily Record. Sign up to our Criminal Record newsletter here .
READ NEXT
