ON DEMAND - Reforming the Mental Health Act: Have your say on the White Paper Consultation Questions

Thursday 18 March

This webinar was the next in our series of webinars discussing the government’s proposed changes to the Mental Health Act.

The consultation questions cover fundamental changes to mental health law and the management of services, just a few of which include:

• We want to change the detention criteria so that an individual is only detained if there is a substantial likelihood of significant harm to the health, safety or welfare of the person, or the safety of any other person. Do you agree or disagree with this change?
• We want to give the Mental Health Tribunal more power to grant leave, transfers and community services. We propose that health and local authorities should be given 5 weeks to deliver on directions made by the Mental Health Tribunal. Do you agree or disagree that this is an appropriate amount of time?
• Do you agree or disagree that in addition to the power to require the responsible clinician to reconsider treatment decisions, the Mental Health Tribunal judge (sitting alone) should also be able to order that a specific treatment is not given?
• Do you agree or disagree with the proposed reforms to the way the Mental Health Act applies to people with a learning disability and autistic people?

There were also questions relating to the new proposed Advance Choice Documents and Care and Treatment Plans.

In this webinar we looked at these and other consultation questions and invited your input to help us submit a response that reflects your priorities.

You can watch the full recording of the webinar here:

This webinar was a follow up to another that we held in February 2011 as a part of our webinar series on the Governments changes to the Mental Health Act, where Simon Lindsay and Jennifer Nwachukwu were joined by Stuart Marchant to discuss the proposed changes to the mental health system. They considered what the impact of the Government’s response might be, how it will affect existing practice, and the challenges and opportunities that the new legislation will bring. You can watch it now On Demand

The Mental Health Act White Paper can be read here