Mental Health Services: Police

(asked on 25th October 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to encourage mental health services to work more closely with local police.


Answered by
Maria Caulfield Portrait
Maria Caulfield
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
This question was answered on 2nd November 2022

We are encouraging closer working through NHS Liaison and Diversion Services, through the proposals of our draft Mental Health Bill, and through our call for evidence launched earlier this year.

Liaison and Diversion services operate at police stations and criminal courts to identify and assess people with vulnerabilities (substance misuse, mental health problems) and refer them into appropriate services and, where appropriate, away from the justice system.

As set out in NHS England’s Liaison and Diversion Standard Service Specification 2019, due to the multi-agency nature of these services it is essential that all contributing agencies, including health services and the police, are encouraged to proactively engage with the process, to ensure that the aims of the liaison and diversion service are met.

Our draft Mental Health Bill proposes to remove police stations as a place of safety under the Mental Health Act, to help ensure that in future all people in a mental health crisis are taken to a clinical environment. The Government is working with police forces and NHS England to prepare the system for this change.

In April we launched our public call for evidence for evidence on what can be done across government in the longer term to support mental health, wellbeing and suicide prevention. Through the call for evidence, we are considering the role of multi-agency working in improving crisis care, including the relationship between police forces and mental health services.

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