The occupation of a building in Tension Road in Cambridge by service users worried about the future of Cambridge Complex Cases service has won national attention -; and they were visited by Labour’s Shadow Health Minister Luciana Berger MP on Monday morning. She also met senior members of the Cambridge and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust.

The dispute was featured in The Mirror last week, and occupiers have received support from a wide range of local groups. Luciana Berger was accompanied by Cambridge Labour Parliamentary Candidate Daniel Zeichner who said: “I’m delighted that Labour’s Shadow Health Minister Luciana Berger was able to come to Cambridge today and meet the very brave and determined women who are campaigning to keep Lifeworks alive.

They made a powerful case, with very moving and compelling accounts, explaining how the existing service allows them to support one another. They are absolutely certain that ending the service will leave them subject to sudden fluctuations in their health, which will in turn lead to expensive and traumatic emergency admissions to already hard-pressed acute services. This is a fundamental disagreement about how best to treat a particular client group, and my concern is that although well-intentioned, the mental health trust is allowing dogma to trump lived-experience.

Lifeworks works, whatever the theoreticians say, and is worth keeping.”