FAMILY HANDOUT
A woman whose mentally-ill son killed her father in 2009 says an NHS trust failed to learn lessons from her tragedy.
Kathleen Barnard was speaking after a Care Quality Commission (CQC) report criticised failures in the case of Nottingham killer Valdo Calocane.
Calocane had been under the care of the same NHS trust as Ms Barnard’s son, William, now in his 40s, who stabbed his grandfather John McGrath to death in 2010.
Ms Barnard says she was not told he had stopped taking his anti-psychotic medication after he was told the drug was voluntary. Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust said it accepted the CQC report and has “significantly improved processes and standards” since the review.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Ms Barnard said that mistakes made in mental health care are to blame for her father’s death, not her son.
She said William was told he did not need to keep taking medication he had been prescribed for paranoid schizophrenia if he did not want to.
“That’s not the right attitude,” she said. “Because then nine months later my dad lost his life.”
Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust apologised for its failings at the time.
Reflecting on the recent CQC report, Ms Barnard said “it’s the same again really to what happened to us” adding that there were “failings and missed opportunities again”.
“It makes you angry. And it is scary because you just don’t know who is walking about who should be under some care.”
Calocane was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2020 and was sectioned four times in less than two years.
In June 2023, he killed university students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both aged 19, with a knife as they returned from a night out in Nottingham, before stabbing to death Ian Coates, 65, near the school where he worked as a caretaker.
On Monday, the BBC revealed a doctor had warned three years before the Nottingham attacks that Calocane’s mental illness was so severe he could “end up killing someone”.
It was one of a series of missed opportunities over three years that could have prevented the killings, Calocane’s mother and brother told BBC Panorama in their first interview.
The doctor’s warning appeared in a 300-page summary of medical records the family received only after Calocane was sentenced for the killings, which they have shared with Panorama.
After the CQC report, the families of Calocane’s victims said those responsible for failings in his care have “blood on their hands”.
Ms Barnard told the Today programme she could empathise with Calocane’s family, but she could also relate to those whose family members he killed, because her situation was “unique”.
“I lost my father, who I loved, and this was my son that did that,” she said. “So it was a unique situation to be in. It is the stuff of nightmares.”
Asked what she would say to Calocane’s victims’ families, who have expressed frustration that he has been given an indefinite hospital order rather than a prison sentence, Ms Barnard said: “If someone is truly mentally unwell, then a prison is not the right place for them. Because at least in hospital there will be an attempt at trying to treat him.”
She added that hospital is “not the easier option” and high security hospitals can be “more severe than prison”.
NOTTINGHAMSHIRE POLICE
Ms Barnard said she never blamed her son for killing her father because she knew he was unwell.
“That wasn’t the Will that I know and that isn’t the Will I know now,” she said.
She added that her son’s mental health team now “keep a close eye on things” and she feels “completely safe” around him.
Ms Barnard’s son now lives with her and he “religiously” takes his medication himself, she says.
Nottinghamshire Healthcare said it offers its “sincere apologies” to the families of Calocane’s victims.
It said it accepts the conclusions of the CQC report and it has “significantly improved processes and standards” since the review was carried out.
Its chief executive, Ifti Majif, said in a statement: “We have a clear plan to address the issues highlighted and are doing everything in our power to understand where we missed opportunities and learn from them.”
Additional reporting by Pia Harold and Ian Aikman.
