The Mental Heath Alliance is a unique coalition of some 75 organisations working together to secure a better Mental Health Bill.
The Alliance came together in 1999 because of widespread concerns about the Government's proposals for a new Mental Health Act in England and Wales, the legal means by which people can be deprived of their liberty and treated without consent because of their mental health.
Controversy over Mental Health Act reform began in 1998, when then secretary of state for health Frank Dobson announced the Government's intention to create new legislation to close 'loopholes' in the current Act, which was passed in 1983.
A year later, an Expert Committee chaired by Genevra Richardson made recommendations for a new Bill. Many of the main tenets of this were rejected in subsequent policy announcements and in the 2002 draft Bill. Consultation on the draft Bill provoked some 2,000 responses.
After a gap of two years, during which time a new Mental Health Act was introduced in Scotland, the second draft Bill was published in September 2004. It, too, was universally criticised,. A Joint Scrutiny Committee of Parliament produced a report on the draft Bill that made 107 recommendations for changing proposals it described as 'fundamentally flawed' in parts.
In March 2006, the Department of Health announced that it was dropping the draft Mental Health Bill and would instead amend the 1983 Mental Health Act.
The Mental Health Act has now been passed, see the Policy Watch section for updates and consultations.
This is our response to the consultation on the Draft Code of Practice. It covers places of safety, supervised community treatment and mental health and offending.
Download our response (PDF, 36 KB)
Simon Lawton Smith from the King’s Fund and a team from SCMH carried out an independent review in 2006 - 2007 of a Mental Health Review Tribunal judicial case-management pilot project at South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, on behalf of the Department of Health.
The pilot aimed to establish whether judicial case management would enable tribunals to handle Review Tribunal cases more speedily and justly, whilst ensuring that all parties before the tribunal were on an equal footing. The evaluation covers Section 2 and section 3 cases.
Download the Judicial Case Management report (Word document, 554 KB)