Mental Health Services: Prisoners

(asked on 13th April 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether he plans to reform mental health services for (a) prisoners and (b) those recently released from prison.


This question was answered on 24th April 2017

There are commitments in NHS England’s “Next Steps for the Five Year Forward View” and the Strategic Direction for Health and Justice 2016-20 to “support the development of mental health, substance misuse and earlier crisis care for children, young people and adults in the criminal justice system” as well as “developing a new mental health specification in the adult secure and detained estate in 2017”.

To support these commitments, work is ongoing to design and test an optimum mental health service model for the prison estate.

Work is also being led by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health on behalf of NHS England, to develop a set of quality benchmarks for community mental health services. This is due for publication in 2018 and will comprise recommended standards for the provision of treatment and support along the journey from referral to recovery, for anyone in receipt of community based mental health services, including those who have been released from prison.

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