by Lamiat Sabin
in Southport

BROADMOOR high-security psychiatric hospital wardens regularly have to deal with patients’ faeces and urine during dirty protests with no additional pay, it was highlighted yesterday.

Staff are only supplied with a boiler suit to protect them from contracting diseases and infections, Broadmoor delegate Trevor Chaplain Smith said at the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) conference.

This is in comparison to specialist cleaning teams that get paid £50 each for every dirty protest that they are called in to deal with.

Contracts to be offered to new psychiatric hospital wardens from next year will see them paid around £420 less than existing staff, despite both experiencing unprecedented levels of violence and workloads.

Varying shift times and long hours are also putting both the staff’s and patients’ wellbeing in danger. The unsocial hours allowance is also “on its way out,” Mr Chaplain Smith said.

The talk of dirty protests — where detainees defecate or urinate around their cells — continued from Tuesday when the motion was passed to increase prison officers’ current additional pay from £10 to £30 to work in disgusting surroundings.

One of the Personal Protective Equipment team was stabbed in the shoulder and was nearly killed by a patient who was smashing up his cell.

Two days after returning to work following a series of operations, the staff member was put on sickness monitoring due to the amount of time taken off to recover.

The line manager’s decision was retracted but it is something that happens “regularly,” the Broadmoor representative said, and the pressure laid on overworked and under-appreciated staff needs to stop.

lamiatsabin@peoples-press.com