Looking for answers

A KILSYTH family is hunting for answers after a relative with severe learning difficulties was able to walk straight out of hospital and wander nearby streets.

On Sunday night, Janice King received a phone call from an unknown good samaritan who had found her 31-year-old daughter, Karen King, roaming around Coatbridge in her nightie. She had been committed to the mental health unit at Monklands Hospital a week previously, to a general psychiatric ward rather than a secure unit due to a shortage of beds.

And now the family is asking a number of questions of NHS Lanarkshire. “We want to know how this happened,” said her uncle, Billy McNeill.

For the full story see this week’s Cumbernauld News and Kilsyth Chronicle - on sale now!