By Stefan Morkis

AN ANGUS father revealed last night he is planning to take NHS Tayside to court in a row over the care of his brain-damaged teenage son.

The health board say the 18-year-old needs months of extensive rehabilitation at a Dundee brain injury clinic, while his father believes he would receive better care at home.

Matters escalated last week when doctors used the Mental Health Act to detain the patient in hospital after his father demanded to take his son home.

His father has now declared he will challenge the detention order in court later this week and look after his son at home if it is overturned.

The man’s son was injured in April when he fell off an embankment while out with his brother in the Hilltown.

He was in a coma for several days and suffered severe brain damage which has impaired his motor functions and speech.

Six weeks ago he was transferred to NHS Tayside’s Centre for Brain Injury Rehabilitation at Royal Victoria Hospital.

Since then his father has become increasingly dissatisfied with the care provided at the hospital and claims he will only receive the care he needs at home.

On Friday, the father demanded his son was released into his care but doctors remain adamant that allowing this to happen could destroy any chance of long-term improvements in his condition.

Although the patient is allowed out to spend days with his family, he must be returned to Royal Victoria Hospital by 8pm each night.

“He’s been in Royal Victoria for six weeks but has been going backwards since going there,” said the father yesterday.

“If he’s at home he can go out in the garden or in the field at the back of the house but there he’s just stuck in a chair watching daytime TV.

“Eventually, I had enough and told them that I wanted to take him home to stay.

“On Friday they put a detention order on him and said if he wasn’t returned each night the police would come and get him.

“We have hired a solicitor and will be appealing the detention order.”

He said he was angry at NHS Tayside’s decision to use legal measures to keep his son in their care.

“Why would a hospital need to issue a detention order? I wouldn’t have wanted to take him home if he’d been getting better care—I don’t want to rip him out of hospitals,” he said.

If the patient’s father is successful in overturning the detention order in court, then NHS Tayside will have to release him into his father’s custody.

Shona Singers, head of communications for NHS Tayside, said, “The clinicians who have cared for this patient have had many discussions with the father regarding the medical condition and future care.

“However, we have now been made aware that the father has proposed legal action regarding detention and therefore can make no further comment.”