Mental Health Services: Children and Young People
(asked on 27th March 2017) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to ensure that children and young people accessing specialist inpatient mental health services have their voices heard and are involved in decisions about their treatment and care.
Shared Decision Making is a process in which patients can participate actively with their healthcare professional in making decisions about their health and care. This can only be realised by involving patients fully in their own care, with decisions made in partnership with clinicians, rather than by clinicians alone as set out in No decision about me without me (DH2012 link below) which outlined the principles of patients and service users, their carers and families more say. This includes areas such as mental health services, both inpatient and outpatient.
The Department strengthened the guiding principles of the Mental Health Act 1983: Code of Practice to make clear what rights and expectations patients, their families and carers have in relation to the Mental Health Act.
The Act can be accessed here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/code-of-practice-mental-health-act-1983