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Post by Admin on Apr 26, 2021 14:18:14 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 26, 2021 14:19:29 GMT
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Post by Admin on Jul 29, 2021 14:02:10 GMT
Open consultation Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act 2018 statutory guidance From: Department of Health and Social Care Published 25 May 2021 www.gov.uk/government/consultations/mental-health-units-use-of-force-act-2018-statutory-guidanceSummary We want your views on the statutory guidance to prevent the inappropriate use of force and ensure transparency and accountability about the use of force in mental health units. This consultation closes at midday on 17 August 2021 Consultation description Applies to: England (and police forces in Wales) The use of force includes: physical, mechanical or chemical restraint of a patient the isolation of a patient, including seclusion and segregation The Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act became law in November 2018. The aim of the Act and the statutory guidance is to: clearly set out the measures that are needed to both prevent the inappropriate use of force ensure accountability and transparency about the use of force in mental health units The statutory guidance, which will be issued by the Department of Health and Social Care, is intended for use by NHS hospitals and independent hospitals (providing NHS-funded care) in England providing care and treatment to patients with a mental disorder. It will provide the information they need about how they should meet the legal obligations placed on them by the Act, in addition to best practice advice. The guidance also covers the obligations on police officers when in mental health units in England. We welcome all responses to the consultation, especially from those who have lived experience of mental ill health or have been subjected to the use of force in a mental health unit. Please refer back to the full statutory guidance when answering the consultation questions. See the easy read version of the consultation.
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Post by Admin on Aug 4, 2021 12:18:08 GMT
Registration open and call for poster abstracts! Trent Study Day 2021: Restrictive interventions in secure mental health settings Date and time: Friday 19th November 2021, (approx.) 9.00 – 15.30 Venue: DoubleTree Hilton, Nuthall Road, Nottingham NG8 6AZ (in the event of a change in Covid-19 guidelines, the event will be held on MS Teams) Cost: Limited free places for Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust staff £120.00 (£60.00 if online) All external attendees (i.e. anyone who is not employed by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust) The Trent Study Day is an annual conference which is hosted by the Forensic Services Division of Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and the Institute of Mental Health. The conference is aimed at professionals working in the field of forensic mental health and the criminal justice system including clinicians, managers, commissioners, and others. It is hoped (and we are planning) for the event to go ahead in the traditional face to face format if Covid-19 restrictions allow, but if the situation changes we will move the event to an online format via MS Teams. There will be limited free places for Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust staff and limited paid for places for external attendees, so social distancing can be adhered to within the venue. There will be no limit to numbers should the event be moved online, so we will be keeping a waiting list. Confirmed speakers include: Matt Kinton, National Mental Health Act Policy Advisor, Care Quality Commission (CQC) Dr Pratish Thakker, Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist, Rampton Hospital Dr Callum Ross, Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist and Clinical Lead, Broadmoor Hospital David Jones, Nurse Consultant for Violence Reduction, Nottinghamshire Healthcare Dr Rebecca O’Donovan, Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist, WEMS service, Arnold Lodge Georgina Vince, LTHSE Specialist Pathways Progression Lead, HMPPS Full programme details will follow shortly Guidelines for poster abstract submissions www.institutemh.org.uk/images/Guidelines_for_poster_submissions_v4_sg.pdfTrent Study Day: Restrictive interventions in secure mental health settings www.institutemh.org.uk/events/event/158-trent-study-day-restrictive-interventions-in-secure-mental-health-settings
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Post by Admin on Sept 10, 2021 19:09:56 GMT
What does the Government’s health and social care plan mean for mental health support? www.centreformentalhealth.org.uk/blogs/what-does-governments-health-and-social-care-plan-mean-mental-health-support8 September 2021 By Andy Bell This week the Government published its ‘plan for health and social care’ in England. The much-awaited document set out plans to increase National Insurance payments in order to increase funding for both the NHS and for social services. For mental health and social care services, however, and for people living with mental health difficulties, the plan offers little clarity about the future. The additional funding announced for the NHS, for example, is identified to reduce the backlog of elective acute care. Unlike previous health care spending announcements, there is no mention of additional funding for mental health support, despite a recognition that demand for mental health services is rising and is projected to increase further as a result of the pandemic. It is vital that mental health support is not sidelined by the need to address growing waiting lists for physical health care. And it will be crucial that the whole of the health and care workforce gets support for its mental health, too, in the aftermath of the traumatic events many people have experienced (and continue to go through today). the payment system for social care means that many people with mental health needs have to pay for some or all of their care, facing complex bureaucratic procedures to get access to basic services On social care, the plan offers scant detail, especially for people of working age. While the focus of the document is on the thresholds for charging and co-payment, decisions about how social care will be structured and placed on a more sustainable footing will be made in a future white paper. Mental health social care is an essential service, yet it has struggled to maintain its statutory responsibilities under the Care Act. And the payment system for social care means that many people with mental health needs have to pay for some or all of their care, facing complex bureaucratic procedures to get access to basic services. On public health, the plan remains mostly silent. Local authorities have faced years of austerity and funding cuts for both social care and public health services, and there is little assurance about whether they will be reversed in the next few years. The paper does discuss prevention, but the focus is on the role of the NHS in offering health checks and giving people advice about their individual ‘lifestyles’ and ‘behaviours’. This offers little to the public’s mental health, and without a recognition of what determines our chances of good or poor health, it risks being a missed opportunity to put prevention at the heart of the reformed system. With MPs set to vote on reducing Universal Credit payments by £20 a week later today, many thousands of people may face greater risks to their mental health within weeks. We urgently need to focus policymaking on actions that can promote better mental health for all, and reduce the inequalities that drive so much mental – and, subsequently, physical – ill health. Without a strategy to protect and promote the nation’s health and wellbeing, the reforms announced yesterday will leave the NHS and local councils on the back foot, trying to meet ever-growing demand for support The Government’s plan for health and social care will bring more funding into the NHS and (eventually) social services, and this will be vital. And while we await further decisions about social care, there remains an important opportunity to modernise a system which has been overlooked and undervalued since 1948. But without a strategy to protect and promote the nation’s health and wellbeing, the reforms announced yesterday will leave the NHS and local councils on the back foot, trying to meet ever-growing demand for support.
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Post by Admin on Oct 4, 2021 14:06:38 GMT
Open consultation Shaping future support: the health and disability green paper www.gov.uk/government/consultations/shaping-future-support-the-health-and-disability-green-paperDPO Forum response to Health & Disability Green Paper www.nsun.org.uk/news/dpo-forum-response-to-health-disability-green-paper/Posted on 27 September 2021 Shaping future support: the health and disability green paper Consultation response from the DPO Forum England September 2021 About us The DPO Forum England brings together disabled people’s organisations (DPO’s) across England to work collectively to act as the voice of disabled people. The DPO forum offers a unique and valuable perspective, as the members are all DPO’s that are majority run and controlled by and for disabled people. We are truly able to speak as a voice of disabled people because we represent disabled people. Our current membership includes:- Alliance for Inclusive Education Breakthrough UK Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living Choices and Rights (Hull & East Riding) Chronic Illness Inclusion Disability Positive Disability Rights UK Disability Sheffield Disability Stockport Disabled People Against Cuts Equal Lives Equality Together Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People Inclusion London National Survivor User Network People First Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance Shaping Our Lives Sisters of Frida Spectrum CIL WECIL (West of England Centre for Inclusive Living) Note: Within this response we use the words ‘disabled people’, ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ to mean disabled people facing disabling societal barriers due to their impairments or conditions and this includes physical impairments, mental ill health/mental distress, hearing including deaf and Deaf with BSL as first language, or visual impairments, learning disability/difficulty, neurodiverse people, and those with chronic illness or fatigue.
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Post by Admin on Mar 30, 2022 19:40:45 GMT
Government launches long-awaited consultation on new deprivation of liberty system By John Pring on 24th March 2022 Category: Human Rights www.disabilitynewsservice.com/government-launches-long-awaited-consultation-on-new-deprivation-of-liberty-system/The government has launched a long-awaited consultation on a new system of safeguards that aim to protect service-users who are considered unable to consent to restrictions placed on their liberty through their care and support. The new Liberty Protection Safeguards (LPS) will replace the current “bureaucratic” and “too complex” Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards, and they will apply in any setting in England and Wales. The 16-week consultation – launched by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the Ministry of Justice – will seek views on the LPS regulations, and on changes to the Mental Capacity Act code of practice. It is the first revision of the code of practice since it was published in 2007. In the consultation document, care minister Gillian Keegan says LPS is “designed to be a simpler, more streamlined system which puts the person being deprived of liberty at the heart of the decision-making process”. Among the protections provided by the new LPS system, ministers say, will be an “explicit duty” to consult with the disabled person and those interested in their welfare to discover their wishes and feelings about proposed restrictions. LPS will also extend protection to 16 and 17-year-olds and to service-users in any care setting, and they will reduce the number of assessments needed to make decisions on restrictions on liberty. In a draft equalities impact assessment of the introduction of LPS, DHSC says LPS “aims to ensure that the process is fairer and more consistently applied so that everyone who is entitled to safeguards can access them”. “This should improve equality in the way that everyone is processed within the system, limiting victimisation, harassment, and discrimination,” it says. Under the current DoLS system, many people are not having their right to liberty safeguarded – under article five of the European Convention on Human Rights – for “significant periods of time, or in some cases at all” because of the backlog of cases awaiting authorisation, says DHSC. The impact assessment also argues that LPS will increase the equality of opportunity for disabled people receiving support in the community, because their rights will now be upheld via LPS rather than having to face the “potential burden of process and stress” of having to go through the Court of Protection, as they do under the current system. The LPS system was originally introduced through the Mental Capacity (Amendment) Act 2019, but its implementation has twice been delayed by ministers. DHSC was criticised throughout the act’s progress through parliament for its failure to consult with disabled people and their organisations over its contents. The government had originally planned to implement LPS in October 2020, and then delayed implementation until 1 April 2022 because of the pandemic, but Keegan told MPs that a new date would now be set after the consultation, which ends on 7 July.
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Post by Admin on Apr 12, 2022 20:35:58 GMT
Not one recommendation achieved, two years after CQC restraint and seclusion review By John Pring on 31st March 2022 Category: Human Rights www.disabilitynewsservice.com/not-one-recommendation-achieved-two-years-after-cqc-restraint-and-seclusion-review/Not a single one of the 17 recommendations made two years ago by a government-commissioned review into the use of restraint, seclusion and segregation of disabled people has been carried out, the care regulator has concluded. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) said that 13 of the recommendations it made in October 2020 had not been achieved, while the other four had only “partly been achieved”, following the report into serious concerns about the treatment of autistic people, people with learning difficulties, and people with mental distress. This week’s report says that little progress has been made since CQC’s interim Out of Sight – Who Cares? report was published in 2019, and that “far too many people are still subject to restraint and seclusion and more people than before are in long-term segregation”. There are more people in long-term segregation now than there were in November 2018 when the government commissioned the report, it says. And while data from December 2021 shows the number of people with learning difficulties in inpatient services has nearly halved since March 2015, the number of autistic people in such services has risen by three-fifths. There has also been an increase in the number of autistic people and people with learning difficulties in hospitals more than 50 kilometres from their local community. And more than 350 autistic people or people with learning difficulties in a mental health hospital (one sixth of the total) have been in hospital for more than 10 years. CQC says that its 2020 report called for the development of resources to ensure that people could be supported in the community and so avoid hospital admission. But it says: “Far from an improvement, we have seen that people have found accessing community mental health support more difficult. “This is partly due to the impact of COVID-19. The pandemic has led to a mental health crisis in a system that was already overloaded.” Because the government has failed to implement proposals for care and treatment reviews to become statutory, there is no accountability that ensures service-providers and commissioners carry out review recommendations. As a result, the recommendations are often not carried out, says the report. Reviews that were carried out uncovered restrictions on access to personal possessions, fresh air, activities, telephones, and visitors “for which there was no justifiable reason or clear rationale”, CQC said. Steps taken to “manage people’s risks did not consider the impact on their dignity and were frequently unnecessarily harsh or overly restrictive”, while CQC also found that people’s physical health needs were not being considered or met, such as staff denying them access to dentists or opticians. The CQC report warns that people’s human rights “continue to be at risk” and services continue to fail to provide them with reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act. The report concludes: “We know that there are still too many people in hospital unnecessarily, that too many people are subject to restrictive interventions, and that not enough people are able to access the support they need in the community. This must change.” Debbie Ivanova, CQC’s deputy chief inspector for people with a learning disability and autistic people, said: “The pandemic has clearly had an impact on services and the people that use them in a way that could not have been foreseen. “However, progress on the recommendations we made for change have not been happening quickly enough. “We are calling on all partners to commit to a renewed effort to move forward, sharing responsibility for implementing the changes needed. “The focus must be on meeting people’s individual needs. “Improved collaboration at system level, provider level and at an individual level with people and their families is also required to deliver the necessary improvements. “Services must fit around people rather than trying to fit people into services that can’t meet their needs.”
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Post by Admin on Apr 13, 2022 20:55:30 GMT
Down syndrome bill is ‘very weak’ and potentially divisive, say self-advocates By John Pring on 7th April 2022 Category: Politics www.disabilitynewsservice.com/down-syndrome-bill-is-very-weak-and-potentially-divisive-say-self-advocates/Campaigners with learning difficulties have raised serious concerns about a “very weak” and potentially divisive bill that has been approved by parliament and aims to improve support for people with Down syndrome. MPs and peers have approved the government-backed private member’s bill, proposed by the former Conservative defence secretary Dr Liam Fox, despite significant concerns being raised about its contents and purpose. The Down syndrome bill has just a few simple clauses and will ensure that councils and other relevant public bodies – such as NHS trusts and schools – have “due regard” to new guidance, but it provides no new funding. The guidance – which will be issued by the government – will explain the steps that it would be “appropriate” for the public body to take to meet the needs of people with Down’s syndrome in its area on social care, health, education and housing. Heidi Crowter, a disabled campaigner who is a member of the National Down Syndrome Policy Group, which has played a significant role in promoting the bill, said that she was “so happy” that the “fantastic” bill would now become law. On her blog, she said she was so passionate about the bill “because I am someone who happens to have down’s syndrome and I am living proof that people with down’s syndrome with the right support and care can live a funfilled life”. But other campaigners with learning difficulties have been critical of the bill. People with learning difficulties who are members of the Covid-19 Support and Action Group, which was set up by the disabled people’s organisations People First (Self Advocacy) and Change, discussed the bill last month. They said their key response to the bill had been to question “why” it was necessary. They said: “Our understanding is that it didn’t originally come from people with Down syndrome and the bill hasn’t been written by people with Down syndrome. “In fact, there was very little consultation or communication about this before it was put forward as a bill. “This is not to say that people with Down syndrome don’t or shouldn’t support the bill, but it does cause us concern about why it is felt that the Down syndrome bill is necessary. “Why do public bodies need guidance just for people with Down syndrome and not for other people with learning difficulties or disabilities? “It is taking a very backward step. It is focusing on a person’s diagnosis and condition; it is singling out one diagnosis and condition. “It does not reflect the values and principles of the social model of disability. We also fear it is at risk of compromising the rights of others. “Does this mean we need to have a bill (special guidance) for every diagnosis and condition?” The group added: “The arguments for the bill seem to be very weak. “In our view it is weak and unnecessary and at worst divisive.” The disabled Liberal Democrat peer Baroness [Sal] Brinton told fellow peers on Friday that the bill had raised the profile of Down syndrome, which was “a good thing and long overdue”. But she pointed to the risk that it could create a “hierarchy of learning disability” against a background of “limited resources”. Last month, at the bill’s second reading, Baroness Brinton, a vice-president of the Local Government Association, said she feared that this new hierarchy “risks doing harm to the rights of other disabled people, particularly people with learning disabilities, which may also be discriminatory”. She said: “I know that by giving one group rights when resources are scarce, others will not get them.” She also raised concerns that the bill represented “a regressive step politically, by advancing a medical model of disability and elevating diagnosis over individual needs” and would “create considerable legal and regulatory complexity for local councils, the NHS and schools at a time when they are already stretched in meeting statutory duties”. At second reading, the Green peer Baroness [Natalie] Bennett had raised concerns that the bill’s duties “demand very little of public bodies”, “attract no new funding”, and “provide no meaningful mechanisms for enforcement or redress”. The junior health and social care minister Lord [Syed] Kamall told peers last month that the bill was “not about enhanced rights” for people with Down syndrome, but was about “making sure these identifiable and unique needs are not overlooked when planning, designing and delivering services”. He told peers on Friday: “The bill does not remove the duties under the Equality Act 2010 for relevant authorities to assess all the needs of people to whom they provide support. “Our assessment is that, to prioritise funding and resources for people with Down syndrome above other groups without proper assessment of people’s needs would be considered unlawful.” He said the government would “consult with a broad set of stakeholders in developing the guidance, including those with other conditions” and that “people with lived experience will be at the heart of this at each phase of its development”.
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Post by Admin on Apr 14, 2022 21:34:16 GMT
Concern as NHS England blocks bid to see reviews of ‘unsafe’ SIM scheme By John Pring on 14th April 2022 Category: Human Rights www.disabilitynewsservice.com/concern-as-nhs-england-blocks-bid-to-see-reviews-of-unsafe-sim-scheme/NHS England is unlawfully blocking attempts to see reviews carried out across the country into the use of a mental health scheme that disabled campaigners have branded unethical, unlawful and unsafe. The reviews were announced last spring following mounting concerns about the use of the Serenity Integrated Mentoring (SIM) system, and its rapid rollout across the NHS in England, despite the lack of quality research into its impact on mental heath service-users. Concerted campaign pressure by the StopSIM coalition had led to NHS England’s national clinical director for mental health, Tim Kendall, writing to mental health trusts to call on them to review their use of the scheme. But although many of those reviews were completed by January this year, NHS England has so far ignored attempts by Disability News Service (DNS) to obtain them under freedom of information (FOI) laws. The request was first submitted in January and, other than automatic acknowledgements to show the emails were received by the NHS England freedom of information team, there has been no response to three DNS emails over the last three months. NHS England’s communications team had also failed to respond to requests to comment on the organisation’s apparently unlawful behaviour by 11am today (Thursday). The StopSIM coalition has described SIM as an “unacceptable step backwards in disability justice” and says that it has the effect of criminalising mental distress. It says that SIM and SIM-type schemes put pressure on users of mental health services – often those at high risk of suicide and self-harm – who have not committed a crime but are seen as “high intensity users” of emergency services. Despite being at very high risk of self-harm or suicide, individuals under SIM can be prevented from accessing potentially life-saving treatment from services such as ambulance services, accident and emergency departments, mental health crisis services, community mental health teams and the police. SIM also gives police officers a key role in making clinical decisions when service-users are in crisis, and – says the coalition – is “heavily reliant” on their “coercive” powers to enforce “behavioural management”. The coalition says: “The focus of SIM is on reducing service demand… not the patients’ well-being or experience. “Indeed, we believe this programme will have the effect of re-traumatising individuals.” A StopSIM coalition spokesperson told DNS this week: “Over 63,000 members of the public have supported our campaign calling for reviews of the SIM model: the substance of the reviews are a matter of public interest. “NHS England have informally confirmed receipt of the FOI with the coalition on a number of occasions, and told us that they are in the process of preparing the documents for release. “We are disappointed and concerned that NHS England have not complied with their duties under the Freedom of Information Act.”
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Post by Admin on May 12, 2022 20:54:07 GMT
Queen’s speech: Campaigners raise concerns over ‘flawed’ Mental Health Act reforms By John Pring on 12th May 2022 Category: Human Rights www.disabilitynewsservice.com/queens-speech-campaigners-raise-concerns-over-flawed-mental-health-act-reforms/Disabled campaigners have raised concerns about a Mental Health Act reform bill which the government plans to introduce in the new session of parliament. Although many of the proposals to be included in what will be a draft bill were widely welcomed this week, there were concerns at the government’s refusal to push for “full human rights” for people with mental distress. The bill is one of 38 included in this week’s Queen’s speech, which was delivered by Prince Charles on behalf of the UK government and describes its parliamentary plans for the next 12 months. The draft reform bill will be based on a white paper published in January 2021, which was put out to consultation, with the government publishing its response last July. The white paper aimed to deliver “major reform” of the Mental Health Act (MHA), providing service-users in England and Wales with more control over their care and treatment, and ensuring the act’s powers are “used in the least restrictive way”. It also aimed to address the disproportionate detention of people from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, and the use of the act to detain people with learning difficulties and autistic people, as well as improving the treatment of people with mental distress within the criminal justice system. In 2020-21, black people were four times more likely than white people to be detained under the Mental Health Act, and more than 10 times more likely to be placed on a community treatment order. Rates of detention under the act have nearly doubled since 1983. Details in a briefing paper (PDF) published alongside the Queen’s speech this week showed the draft bill will mirror the aims of last year’s white paper. The briefing paper includes references to personalised care, advocacy, choice and control for service-users, addressing the “disparities” faced by people from minority ethnic backgrounds, improving the treatment of offenders, and ensuring that “detentions only happen where strictly necessary”. Although many of last year’s white paper’s proposals were welcomed, it built on recommendations made by Sir Simon Wessely’s independent review of the Mental Health Act in 2018, which was criticised for falling “significantly short” of recommending full human rights for people in mental distress. Dorothy Gould, co-founder of the user-led, rights-based organisation Liberation, said the “underlying problem” with the government’s plans was that it had opted to make “improvements” rather than attempting “root and branch reform of the current, fundamentally flawed system”, which will mean service-users will “continue to experience injustice and oppression”. She said: “The proposals [laid out in this week’s briefing paper] fail to address the need for a radical resolution of the social ills so strongly underpinning acute distress and trauma. “Instead, the proposals draw on a flawed, medical model approach which (conveniently for the government) attributes ‘mental illness’ to individual brain disorders. “The focus on expanding clinical services instead of introducing the full range of badly-needed, holistic and societal resources compounds the problem.” Gould said that a reduction in the number of patients detained under the act would be “a move forward”. But she warned that the government “still plans to use risk assessments to make decisions about detention and forced treatment”, even though “there is no accurate way of assessing risk”, while it still plans to authorise detention and forced treatment despite them representing a “fundamental breach of human rights”. She said: “Greater choice for patients will be important, if it genuinely happens. “However, all patients should have an equal right to this, regardless of supposed ‘capacity’.” She added: “The recognition of major inequalities for racialised communities is vitally important. “But there will only be real change if the government also addresses the flaws of a mental health system based on a white, western, medical model with all its links to colonialism, and acknowledges, instead of denying, the reality of institutional racism.” Mary Sadid, policy officer at National Survivor User Network, said: “There are many questions that remain about the shape our mental health system should take. “For some, the answer lies in the UNCRPD (UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) and the abolition of detention. “As the government moves towards gutting the Human Rights Act in favour of a bill of rights, the ‘implementation gap’ between the UNCRPD and our reality becomes wider still. “Our current context in mental health care is one of coercion and also of exclusion. “When we contextualise this with the current suite of legislative changes, we can see that those who are already marginalised will continue to bear the brunt. “The path ahead is not straightforward, and there are many who are deeply impacted by the system who are not part of conversations about reform.” She added: “Some of the changes cited in yesterday’s Queen’s speech regarding the draft Mental Health Act reform bill are welcome and necessary, including the introduction of a nominated person*, statutory care and treatment plans and a time limit for transfers from prison to hospital for acutely ill prisoners, something that is urgently needed. “However, what underlies the bill is a lack of substance and ambition, and we are concerned about how many of these proposals will be operationalised without significant resourcing. “In the current climate of limited access to care and unsafe staffing levels, it is difficult to imagine these changes making a material difference to those being detained under the act. “In particular, on institutional racism, it is unclear how and if the bill will address disproportionality in detention under the Mental Health Act and community treatment orders. “We are left with the same problem we started with – an unclear path to genuine care for those experiencing mental distress.” *The briefing paper says the bill will allow patients to choose their own ‘nominated person’, rather than have a ‘nearest relative’ assigned for them
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Post by Admin on Aug 23, 2022 12:05:56 GMT
Mental health reforms are ‘full of loopholes’ and will ‘uphold the status quo’ By John Pring on 18th August 2022 Category: Human Rights www.disabilitynewsservice.com/mental-health-reforms-are-full-of-loopholes-and-will-uphold-the-status-quo/The government’s planned mental health reforms contain “far too many loopholes” and will retain a “fundamentally discriminatory” system, according to some of the first detailed concerns raised by disabled people. Three leading disabled campaigners have told Disability News Service this week that they believe the government’s draft mental health bill “lets people down very badly” and is just a “sticking plaster” that will “uphold the status quo”. The draft bill, which applies to England and Wales, will reform the Mental Health Act 1983. It is being examined in detail by a parliamentary joint committee, which issued a call for evidence on 1 August, ahead of hearings due to take place in the autumn. But significant concerns are already emerging about its content, particularly the failure to provide full rights for disabled people as laid out in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). Among concerns raised by Dorothy Gould, founder of the user-led, rights-based organisation Liberation, are that the draft bill will retain key ways in which the Mental Health Act currently breaches the convention – through involuntary detention, forced treatment in psychiatric hospitals and community treatment orders – even if it aims to reduce their use. Those judged not to have capacity would not have the same weight attached to their advance wishes about their treatment as those said to have capacity, she says. And the draft bill would – if it eventually became law – continue to allow denying a person the right to a trial on the basis that they lack mental capacity. Gould has also questioned some of the supposed improvements included in the draft bill. The draft bill aims to reduce detentions, but the terminology it uses is so vague that it is unlikely to reduce the number of people detained, and the lengths of their detentions, she says. Even if someone is assessed as having capacity, clinicians will still be able to have the final say on what goes into their new statutory care and treatment plan, and overrule their wishes, if that professional has a “compelling reason” and approval from a second opinion appointed doctor (SOAD)*. And Liberation says that, even though the bill will allow patients to choose their own “nominated person” to take on various rights and responsibilities, rather than have a “nearest relative” assigned to them, this will only apply to those judged to have “capacity” at the time of their choice, and the nominated person could also be overruled or displaced. The government says its bill will “ensure greater choice and autonomy for patients in a mental health crisis”, address the disproportionate number of people of colour detained under the Mental Health Act, and improve the treatment of people with learning difficulties and autistic people, and of people with mental distress in the criminal justice system. It is based on a white paper published in January 2021, which was put out to consultation, with the government publishing its response last July. Although many of last year’s white paper’s proposals were welcomed, it built on recommendations made by Professor Sir Simon Wessely’s independent review of the Mental Health Act in 2018, which was criticised for falling “significantly short” of recommending full human rights for people in mental distress. Clenton Farquharson, a director of the user-led organisation Community Navigator Services, said detention will still be the “default position” within the mental health system “if resources are not wrapped around the changes needed”. He said: “The government needs to travel in the direction disabled people want, which is the UNCRPD. “Detention should not be the default position. The government needs to put in the missing jigsaw pieces to prevent it happening.” He said this means that funding needs to be “wrapped around law, attitudes, education systems, culture and services”. He said the disabled people’s movement “believes passionately in choice and autonomy for everyone”, which means enabling people who find communication difficult “to understand what others are saying and be understood”, but the draft bill will not allow that to happen adequately. And he said there was no evidence that the draft bill would “make a difference to people from racialised communities”. He said: “Racial equity holds society to a higher standard, demands we pay attention not just at an individual level, but at societal, systems and outcomes levels. “What the government is proposing is a sticking plaster.” Cheryl Prax, from the campaign group Speak Out Against Psychiatry (SOAP), said she believed that psychiatrists – including Wessely – had been put in charge of the reforms, which she said was “like putting gambling dens in charge of Gamblers Anonymous”. She said: “They are not going to put the patients’ needs and wants first.” She said that psychiatry had a history of forcing treatments on people which they later renounce as useless or even harmful, such as lobotomies and insulin comas, while electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), brain implants and psychiatric medications were all “under scrutiny for worsening outcomes”. She said that forced, unwanted psychiatric treatment should not be an option for people in distress. She said: “It is perfectly reasonable not to want ECT or chemicals in your body, yet incapacity is cited as a reason to overrule choices, even choices made when they considered you capable of making them. “We are all human and when in difficulty we need compassion and choices. Human rights should be for all. “In my opinion, psychiatry has tried to uphold the status quo when reviewing the Mental Health Act.” Gould said the draft bill “lets people down very badly” and would allow people to continue to be “subject to coercion through involuntary hospitalisation, forced treatment and community treatment orders, in circumstances which are illegal for others”. She said: “It’s not enough to make ‘improvements’ while retaining a mental health system which is fundamentally discriminatory.” She said the draft bill was still “based on the idea that, for safeguarding reasons, coercion may be necessary for those of us given mental health diagnoses. “Yet we are far more often subjected to abuse and violence than put others at risk and we rarely even receive legal reparation. “It’s also well known that risk assessments are not a good predictor of risk, yet, unlike members of the public in general, we can still be locked up on the basis of potential risk. “It’s very wrong, too, that the bill continues to deny many of us our rights on capacity grounds. “There are also far too many loopholes in the draft bill and these undermine even the proposals that it does contain. “For example, how much real difference will it make now to say that people must pose a ‘serious’ risk if they are to be detained? “Quite apart from the unreliability of risk assessments, ‘serious’ risk could be interpreted in so many different ways. “And, given the current power-dominated culture of many psychiatric hospitals, how was it wise to give clinicians the final say, even about what treatment a detained patient receives?” She added: “This draft bill is not good enough. What we want and deserve are our full human rights under the UNCRPD.” *The SOAD service is run by the Care Quality Commission, and it aims to safeguard “the rights of patients detained under the Mental Health Act who either refuse the treatment prescribed to them or are deemed incapable of consenting”
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Post by Admin on Jan 20, 2023 22:26:24 GMT
Report on draft mental health bill by peers and MPs ‘is seriously flawed’ By John Pring on 19th January 2023 Category: Human Rights www.disabilitynewsservice.com/report-on-draft-mental-health-bill-by-peers-and-mps-is-seriously-flawed/A report by a cross-party committee of MPs and peers on the government’s plans for mental health reform has been described as “seriously flawed and discriminatory” by a user-led organisation. Disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) told the committee last year that the government’s draft mental health bill fell “well short” of compatibility with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). But despite taking evidence from DPOs that called for “fundamental changes” to the bill to address the human rights concerns, the committee has failed to push for such an approach.
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Post by Admin on Jan 27, 2023 3:13:27 GMT
Business as usual pretty much - ‘Halt new mental health bill until there is a public inquiry into deaths and abuse’ By John Pring on 26th January 2023 Category: Human Rights www.disabilitynewsservice.com/halt-new-mental-health-bill-until-there-is-a-public-inquiry-into-deaths-and-abuse/Disabled campaigners are calling on the government to halt its reform of the Mental Health Act until there is a public inquiry into the “appalling failings, abuse and high levels of deaths” in mental health services across England. They say that no effective reform can be carried out until the “dreadful state of affairs is both investigated and addressed decisively”. Last week, a report on the draft mental health bill by a joint committee of MPs and peers was described as “seriously flawed and discriminatory” after it failed to call on the government to deliver immediate “root and branch reform”. The rights-based organisation Liberation is now leading other disabled-led organisations in a demand for a halt to work on the bill until the failings, abuse and deaths are investigated by an independent inquiry. They point to a series of scandals relating to care in mental health units. They include an ongoing independent inquiry into 2,000 deaths linked to mental health wards run by Essex Partnership University Trust over a 21-year period. Among many other scandals, there have been allegations relating to mental health services for teenagers run by the former Huntercombe Group; claims uncovered by a BBC Panorama documentary about abuse at the Edenfield Centre near Manchester; and the deaths of three teenage girls let down by “systemic failings and dangerous and coercive culture and practice” at services run by Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust. rest in link
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Post by Admin on Nov 3, 2023 12:46:34 GMT
“Lives Are Being Stolen By An Outdated Mental Health Act – I Would Know.” By Anonymous, 2 Nov 2023 eachother.org.uk/lives-are-being-stolen-by-an-outdated-mental-health-act-i-would-know/I did not realise I was autistic until I was diagnosed with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) aged 30. For me, this was a life-changing, affirming discovery that helped me to understand and put into perspective the things I’d struggled with all my life. I grew up in a loving family and excelled at school thanks to the structure my parents gave me. I built my life around my family and my school work; I was passionate and determined and wanted to go to university, even managing to secure a place at a university abroad, in the Netherlands, to study science and languages. It was a dream come true. The news that changed the direction of my life, forever. I remember unpacking my boxes with such enthusiasm; I could not wait to start my life in the adult world. I was just about to go out, from my new student accommodation, when I received a phone call from my mother. The news would change the direction of my life forever, and lead to years of undiagnosed struggle and battle for survival. My father had just died of a heart attack. One week later, I said goodbye to my mother again, and just a fortnight after my father’s death, I started university. The years that followed, in my early twenties, were muddled and confusing, but I threw myself into what I loved the most, the pursuit of knowledge. I was lucky enough to secure scholarships to continue studying abroad and travelled Asia during my bachelor’s and master’s degrees. The structure and predictability of education saved me, in many ways, and to all intents and purposes, I was able to flourish. I write all this to provide an insight into the person I was, and still hope I am. For what was to happen next left me bereft of an identity, voice, and purpose. I came back to the UK in early 2018 as my family was still struggling to deal with my father’s passing. My brother was not coping, and my mother was unable to handle the situation. I was bereft, I became unwell and had to curtail my Masters abroad, to help care for my family. After a year, I became increasingly emotionally distressed at the lack of help we as a family were receiving. Behind closed doors, I felt like a failure, heartbroken that I’d had to give up my travels and return to my childhood home. We reached out for help from various services, but there was very little, if anything, available on the ground. The crisis snowballed, and I was admitted for eight days to an inpatient unit at a local hospital. After those eight days, I was deemed fit for discharge and I was ejected back into the community. The environment was chaotic, and traumatizing, and left me with flashbacks. There was no therapy in the community to come to terms with this, and I was again left floundering. To this day, I am still horrified at what I witnessed Four months later and there was still no proper help; at this point I was unable to keep myself safe. I missed my dad and my previous life and felt I had given up everything for nothing. I was admitted involuntarily under the Mental Health Act to an out-of-beds situation, hundreds of miles from home. For the next few months, I was detained in hospital, and I remain to this day horrified at what I witnessed. The doctors deemed me as lacking the capacity to make my own decisions and understand their consequences. A mental health lawyer told me that, because I was unwell, I was unable to leave. I protested vehemently that surely no one could ever recover in such a distressing and terrifying environment. Alarm bells would ring every time there was an incident; I saw restraint upon restraint of young women who were struggling; and many times I called out staff for what I now know to be the overuse of restrictive practice. I became distressed at what I witnessed, and the staff reacted to me in a similar way ; I felt inherently ashamed, as though I had done something wrong. My brain was overwhelmed with the chaos of the setting, the bright lights terrified me, the screaming from adjoining rooms left my body in fight or flight mode, and I wanted to do nothing but escape the current situation. My mental and physical health began to deteriorate as I was experimented upon with various cocktails of medication. My mental and bodily autonomy was no longer my own, and I became a number. Family visits were restricted, and I was branded non-cooperative and troublemaking by staff. Locked rehab was one of the worst places I have ever had the misfortune to be in Eventually, I was moved to my local hospital, but then on to a locked rehab, again hundreds of miles from my home. I was instructed to sign a document, allowing for full funding to go ahead to the locked rehab. This is a requirement when you are accepted for mental health treatment, and this is often in different counties. Integrated Care Boards and health commissioners provide funding for mental health patients to be treated in so called specialist hospitals. Often these places actually lack any specialism, and operate a people before profit model. The coercion and lack of humanity have stayed with me to this day. The locked rehab was one of the worst places I have ever had the misfortune to be in. It is impossible not to contrast the joy, happiness and freedom of having travelled to some lesser-known parts of the world to being locked 24/7 in a corridor, with little access to the outside environment. When you are detained under the Mental Health Act, all your liberties and freedoms are taken from you. I was administered four different medications a day, which led to me becoming increasingly physically unwell. The medications sedated me; I had no agency. Now I look back, I am completely horrified at how this institution was given a huge sum of money, to effectively abuse me. When I was released, I was unable to even put a sentence together, so traumatised was I by what had happened. I obtained a diagnosis privately of autism and ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) in 2022, and what struck me, in hindsight, was the complete lack of training for professionals, with regards to women on the spectrum. I spent 17 months of my life detained and misdiagnosed Emotionally unstable personality disorder is a diagnosis that many undiagnosed autistic women face. It is cited as a personality disorder, where people are impulsive and able to control their emotions. Unfortunately, and in my experience, this diagnosis is carried out purely by observing a person in an already very distressing environment. Autistic women are supremely good at masking their emotions, and when distressed is very often mistaken as a personality disorder. In mine, and many other women’s experience, this diagnosis often leads to further abuse and neglect. When I received my ASD diagnosis, I became supremely angry. How could I have spent 17 months of my life detained in a place that not only made me worse, but also misdiagnosed me? The lack of accountability, justice, and redress also infuriated me, when I found out the locked rehab unit I had been sent to, and which had received so much funding, had been rated unsafe on every account by the CQC. I have struggled to find legal representation and gave up hope of ever bringing the horrors of what happens in specialist mental health units to light. But I began to research and found out that I was far from alone. Currently, it is estimated that more than 2,000 people with learning disabilities and autism are being held under the Mental Health Act in institutions across the country, far away from their families. These are people with their own identities, who have their own lives and families, who have been taken away from everything they know. Such environments are entirely inappropriate and often detrimental to the needs of people like me, like them. There is currently no official advocacy, accessible legal representation, or governmental redress for people with disabilities who have been institutionalised under the Mental Health Act. I feel lucky to be able to tell my story, as many peers who have been put in these places are either still locked up or no longer alive. It is a human rights scandal in plain sight. The opinions shared in this article are that of the authors.
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