Category: Legislation

Podcast

What is the Health and Care Bill and why does it matter?

Source: The King’s Fund podcast

The Health and Care Bill could lead to major changes in how health care is organised in England. But what is the Bill ultimately trying to achieve and how will it make a difference to the care we receive?

Siva Anandaciva sits down with Richard Murray, Chief Executive of The King’s Fund, and Dame Ruth Carnall, former Chief Executive of the NHS in London, to make sense of the Bill, how these changes will be implemented and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

Listen to the podcast here

Brexit Health Alliance

Prioritising health in our future relationship with the EU

Following the ratification of the Withdrawal Agreement, the UK now has until the end of this year to define its future relationship with the EU. The Brexit Health Alliance is concerned that the safety and health of patients and citizens could be overlooked during the negotiations over the next 11 months and has produced a briefing and summary to highlight why time is of the essence and health must be a priority in the future relationship negotiations.

Read the briefing here

Social Workers and a new Mental Health Act

All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Work, July 2019

Report in response to the Independent Review of the Mental health Act 1983, that calls on the Government and NHS Trusts to recognise the social factors of mental health distress and promote the social model of health within new mental health legislation. It also looks at the integration of health and social care, and how social workers’ role can be enhanced in new legislation, in order to uphold the human rights of children and adults suffering ill mental health. The report setsout four principles that should underpin new legislation:

  •  Choice and autonomy – ensuring service users’ views and choices are respected
  • Least restriction – ensuring the Act’s powers are used in the least restrictive way
  • Therapeutic benefit – ensuring patients are supported to get better, so they can be discharged from the Act
  • People as individuals – ensuring patients are viewed and treated as rounded individuals

Click here to view the full report.

Revising the Mental Capacity Act 2005 Code of Practice: call for evidence

Ministry of Justice, January 2019
This call for evidence will aim to seek views and contributions from a range of stakeholders, to develop a robust evidence base which will inform revisions made to the Mental Capacity Act Code of Practice.
The consultation closes on 7th March 2019.
Click here for further information and to respond to the consultation.
 

Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill: (Briefing Paper Number CBP8466)

House of Commons Library, December 2018
House of Commons Library briefing that provides an overview of the Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill, and the debates and amendments made during the Bills Lords stages, ahead of its Second Reading in the Commons on 18 December 2018. The intention of the Bill is to reform the process ( Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS))for authorising arrangements which enable people who lack capacity to consent to be deprived of their liberty (for the purpose of providing them with care or treatment).
Click here to view the briefing.

Equality analysis: liberty protection safeguards – Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill

Department of Health Social Care, December 2018
Examines the potential impact on protected groups of the Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill, which seeks to replace current legislation with Liberty Protection Safeguards. It looks at the positive, neutral and negative effects that this legislation could have on people with protected characteristics and other groups, such as carers.
Click here to view the full report.

Modernising the Mental Health Act: Increasing choice, reducing compulsion: Final report of the Independent Review of the Mental Health Act 1983

Department of Health and Social Care, December 2018
The final report sets out recommendations covering 4 principles that the review believes should underpin the reformed Act:

  • choice and autonomy – ensuring service users’ views and choices are respected
  • least restriction – ensuring the Act’s powers are used in the least restrictive way
  • therapeutic benefit – ensuring patients are supported to get better, so they can be discharged from the Act
  • people as individuals – ensuring patients are viewed and treated as rounded individuals

The review looked at:

  • rising rates of detention under the Act
  • the disproportionate number of people from black and minority ethnic groups detained under the Act
  • processes that are out of step with a modern mental health care system

Click here to view the report.