The statement came from registered mental health nurse, Emma Robinson, during evidence to The Nottingham Inquiry yesterday.

Robinson said the trust felt it had no powers to hold Calocane, adding: ‘We couldn't work with him. We couldn't find him. At this point we just couldn't find him to work with him.'

When asked if Calocane had been left with the general public to deal with, Robinson said: ‘It's not uncommon for us to discharge non-engaging patients, unfortunately, at that time. I think things are very different now. Since this incident I think there's various checklists that people need to go through in terms of discharge. That wasn't -- that wasn't the case when we discharged him.'

Robinson was also asked to comment on a statement in which she had explained the rationale behind the discharge where she wrote: ‘... it ... felt like we'd lost him. He wasn't engaging. I think sometimes, at the back of my mind, it's how long we keep people open to us for?

‘It's dire for me to think this now, but I used to think sometimes is it worse [to] have somebody open on caseloads that you're not engaging with? Should we be discharging them instead? What does it look like if something happens, and we've got this person open to us, and we haven't seen him for months, and months, and months?'

When asked to explain the statement, she added: ‘It's always at the back of our minds with kind of discharge and moving people on, but there's equal concern that having people open for months and months and months on end, and it doesn't appear like we're doing anything as a care team for that person because we can't see them or we can't engage with them. I suppose at that time when I wrote that report, I suppose from previous experience, I've worried about how that's looked, that we've got somebody that's open to us and perhaps we've not been able to treat them for nine months or find them, or -- so sometimes the decision is better to discharge back to the GP.'

When asked if she thought this sounded it had been better to get Calocane ‘off the books', Robinson added: ‘I don't mean to sound it like that, that it's better to get a patient discharged. I just think at that time that's what my thought process was, just in terms of it feels safer to have somebody discharged back to the care of the GP than open to a secondary service when we can't engage them or can't do anything for them.'

A spokesperson for Nottinghamshire Healthcare said: ‘We are committed to giving our fullest co-operation and support to The Nottingham Inquiry. It would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage while evidence is continuing to be heard.'

The inquiry continues.