Mental Health Services: Restraint Techniques

(asked on 3rd February 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what progress has been made on implementing the recommendations and guidance of the Positive and Safe initiative.


This question was answered on 10th February 2017

Since the Coalition Government published Positive and Proactive Care: reducing the need for restrictive interventions in April 2014, the Department, with its partners, has taken a number of steps to implement its recommendations.

These include the development of the Positive and Safe Champions Network to promote good practice in the reduction of restrictive interventions; the inclusion of information about the number and type of restraints in the Mental Health Services Dataset and the development of core standards for the training of staff in techniques of prevention and management of violence and aggression.

The Department of Health and the Department for Education are working to produce, for consultation, new guidance on minimising the use of restraint on children and young people who have autism, learning disabilities or mental health issues, and whose behaviour challenges, in health and care settings and in special schools.

Positive and Proactive Care introduced a requirement that services develop Restrictive Intervention Reduction Plans. These plans along with organisations’ relative use of restraint in comparison with other organisations, form a key focus of the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) inspections. We expect the CQC to use its regulatory powers to ensure that services minimise the use of restraint and other restrictive interventions, including face down restraint.

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