Everyone has the right to vote, including people with mental illness. Voting empowers individuals and influences policies that affect mental health services. Let’s support accessible voting for all, ensuring every voice is heard.
Anyone working in a mental health service with people over 18 can help ensure that their clients, patients and service users are able to vote in this General Election. Simple adjustments, conversations, reassurance and support can make a big difference.
Source: The King’s Fund Health Management and Policy Alert
The Mental Health Act (1983) (MHA) and the Mental Capacity Act (2005) (MCA) both provide a legal means by which people can be deprived of their liberty and admitted to hospital on a formal basis when they lack capacity to consent to their admission and treatment. A key interface of the MHA and the MCA arises where an individual lacks the capacity to decide whether to be admitted to hospital to receive care and treatment, and are not objecting to admission or treatment, then the decision of which Act to use for these purposes is that of professionals involved. This report looks at that decision-making process.
Royal College of Psychiatrists response to the report they commissioned from the Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit’s Strategy Unit ‘Exploring Mental Health Inpatient Capacity accross Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships in England’. The college call for:
• a national programme to support mental health providers to ensure time spent in hospital has clear clinical objectives and value and that all mental health trusts undertake local assessments of the demand for services in their area and make changes to their services accordingly (based on a Quality Improvement approach)
• continued investment in high-quality community mental health services in line with Long Term Plan and the new Community Mental Health Framework for Adults and Older Adults.
Click here to view the report.
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.
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.
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.
