Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure that patients receiving community mental health care are appropriately involved in decisions relating to their treatment plans and discharge from services.

The Department is committed to ensuring that people receiving community mental health care are meaningfully involved in decisions about their treatment, ongoing support, and discharge.

NHS England is introducing a new Personalised Care Framework for secondary mental health services, which sets clear expectations that care and support planning should be collaborative and centred on what matters to the individual. Under the framework, people should have a single, live care plan that reflects their needs, goals, and preferences, is developed jointly with professionals, and is reviewed regularly. This is reinforced through NHS England’s Community Mental Health Framework.

Recent reforms through the Mental Health Act 2025, as well as statutory discharge guidance applying to mental health inpatient settings, further strengthen this approach by promoting coproduced and personalised care and discharge planning.