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Three years on from the devastating attacks in Nottingham by Valdo Calocane, a public inquiry has been launched into the failings that may have prevented that fateful day. Now, the triple killer’s mother and brother are urging politicians to look at the ‘systemic failings’ in mental health care – warning that the ‘decimation’ of funding for services is destroying lives.Presenter: Rebecca Thomas Producer: Camille Chorley  ⁨@camichorley⁩  Videographer: Dan Faber

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00:00Why does this happen? That's the question. Why? And we can go on in this country, doing
00:08inquiry after inquiry after inquiry, until we call it what it is. It's a systemic problem
00:15that needs to be solved. You can be a brilliant nurse, a brilliant psychiatric nurse or doctor,
00:21but if you haven't got resources, you set up to fail. You set up to fail.
00:26On the 13th of June, 2023, Valdokalikain killed three people and injured three others in Nottingham.
00:40The lives he took were those of students Barnaby Webber, Grace O'Malley Kumar and caretaker Ian Coates.
00:49Months before the attacks, Valdokalikain, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia,
00:55was discharged from mental health services run by Nottinghamshire Healthcare Foundation Trust.
01:02However, the serious decline of his mental health started in May 2020, when his mother,
01:08Celeste Callicain, received a call to tell her her son had been suffering from a psychotic episode
01:14and had forced his way into a neighbour's flat. That incident was the start of years of anxiety for
01:20Miss Callicain, waiting for the phone to ring again, for the next crisis to happen.
01:26Then, the worst did happen.
01:30I therefore make an order under all six counts of the indictment
01:34that you will be readmitted to and detained at Ashworth High Security Hospital.
01:38There is so much more to say and clearly serious questions regarding this case
01:42and events leading up to this monster being out in society.
01:46But for today, our darling son, his dear friend Grace and a wonderfully kind grandfather Ian
01:53have been stolen from us forever and let down by the very system that should have been protecting them.
02:00We will never come to terms with the loss of our beloved daughter Grace
02:06and how she lost her life, her heroic actions.
02:11She was a gift to us and she was a gift to the country.
02:14My family has suffered a great loss.
02:16The children who my father had a positive impression on have suffered a great loss.
02:20The city of Nottingham has suffered a great loss.
02:23The NHS Mental Health Trust have to be held accountable for their failures along with the police.
02:28Three years on, a public inquiry into the tragedy has begun.
02:32And with me today, Alvarado Kellecane's family,
02:35ready to speak about how the system failed to prevent that devastating day.
02:40Six years.
02:41He hasn't stopped.
02:43Yeah, it's kind of been non-stop since then.
02:45Until there's a crisis, you don't have a response.
02:48That's how I felt with the system.
02:51No crisis is a good crisis, right?
02:53So if you're waiting for crisis, you're going to get a bad crisis or a worse crisis.
02:56So every time you're flipping the coin, is it going to be a monumental tragedy
03:00or is it going to be something that's relatively less bad, but still bad, right?
03:05What was that like, waiting, constantly having to wait for the crisis,
03:10expecting the unmanageable might happen with Aldo?
03:15So it does feel hopeless when you're in it because you provide the information,
03:21you provide concerns, and often they'll tell you, well, it's okay.
03:25You know, it's, you know, it's fine.
03:29You know, they'll say, Valdo's okay, or we've seen him, we've spoken to him,
03:32we think he's okay.
03:34Even if we're sure that it's not the case, or sometimes we're not sure that it's not the case.
03:38And we, you know, you trust sometimes.
03:40You trust what people are telling you, you trust the professionals.
03:42But the issue is that it's because there isn't an incident to act upon.
03:48And then, yeah, you end up with cases like this.
03:50And it's not just homicide.
03:52There are a thousand many more cases of suicide,
03:56which also have exactly the same hallmarks,
03:58because, yeah, it's the same thing.
04:01It all works within the same system.
04:02It's just that the tragedy is different, right?
04:04Instead of someone hurting someone else, they hurt themselves.
04:07And it's, you know, orders of magnitude more suicides than homicides.
04:14What do you feel that is?
04:15What do you feel the deep-rooted failures are here and were with Valdo's care?
04:21There doesn't seem to be enough resources,
04:23and there aren't enough experienced staff.
04:27And they're all being severely overworked
04:30and under-resourced and probably underpaid in some ways.
04:35There's no way something like that can function properly.
04:38Even the best functioning system, you will find mistakes.
04:41But when you so severely reduce the resources,
04:46there is a consequence, and in this case it's treatment.
04:49Where do you feel the bigger failings lie here?
04:52Is it in the systemic failings that are keeping clinicians under pressure?
04:58Is it with individual clinicians?
05:00Where do you see these failings?
05:02You can be a brilliant nurse, a brilliant psychiatry nurse or doctor,
05:06but if you haven't got resources, you're set up to fail.
05:11You're set up to fail.
05:13You know, you can't treat someone properly, well, or effectively,
05:17someone with a mental disorder without knowing them properly,
05:21without being able to pick up on, I guess, the more subtle symptoms that may display.
05:28If you know someone properly, you'll be much better geared to doing that.
05:32And it's just like a cycle, just like, kind of, we manage a crisis.
05:37It's stable now.
05:38We need our bed.
05:39So somebody else, it needs to be discharged.
05:41And then we go back again.
05:44I may be telling them for some period of time,
05:47oh, it's not well, it's not well.
05:48They reassure me, oh, it's fine, it's fine, because there's no imminent crisis until the crisis happens.
05:53Then he goes to the hospital.
05:55Then it's the same cycle again.
05:57Why does this happen?
05:59That's the question.
06:00Why?
06:02And we can go on in this country, doing inquiry after inquiry after inquiry,
06:08until we call it what it is, it's a systemic problem that needs to be solved.
06:13This is beyond a personal failure.
06:15Because if it's just like an individual failure, it will just happen in one trust,
06:20then it won't happen in another.
06:21But if it happens in here, it happens across the country.
06:24When you hear reports, and considering we've had inquiry after inquiry,
06:31we know what the failings are, we know what the needs are,
06:35but you hear reports such as the government isn't protecting mental health funding,
06:39the proportion of mental health funding is reducing.
06:42How does that make you feel, considering the tragedy?
06:45We were in a situation, yeah, for the third year running,
06:49the government has decided that the proportion of the NHS funding,
06:55the NHS budget that's going to be spent on mental health services
06:58is going to decrease for the third year running.
07:01Like in Valdo's case, it didn't just affect Valdo's life,
07:04it didn't just affect our life as a family, it affected other family.
07:08So the priority on that sector needs to be checked.
07:12Also, I think part of the issue is that people don't know
07:16about how these things come about.
07:18They only see it in cases like this where there's huge media coverage.
07:22So I'm not sure people are being helped to understand
07:28what gets us to this point,
07:30so that we can better understand how to get out of this point.
07:33Who was Valdo before he got ill?
07:36What was the boy and the man like before his illness?
07:40You just need to be able to know him,
07:46the man behind the illness, you know.
07:52That's who he is, who he is Valdo.
07:55As I tell people, I've raised three wonderful kids.
08:00They've been raised exactly the same way,
08:02with moral, with character, with kindness, with respect.
08:09And then the only difference, one is a paranoia schizophrenia.
08:13For the people out there that's maybe going through paranoia schizophrenia,
08:17they don't need to be scared.
08:19If they need help, they should ask for it.
08:22They should speak to people because the way this case has been portrayed
08:25the last three years, I feel my heart goes heavy
08:29for anyone that has got paranoid schizophrenia out there.
08:33They're not monsters.
08:35They're not evil.
08:35the same.
08:36They're treating human beings with a severe mental health condition.
08:40They just need somebody to understand what they need,
08:44what the therapeutic treatment need is to help them.
08:49That's who they are, but they're still the person they are.
08:54With illness they have to, they don't understand themselves,
08:58and then the society doesn't understand.
09:00The society can't see it.
09:02you know
09:04that's why
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