Mental Health Act (1381A/21)
Request
1) How many detentions under s136 Mental Health Act were completed by your officers each year since 2015?
2) Can you break the answer to Q1 down by Borough?
3) Can you break the answer to Q1 down by Age?
4) Can you break the answer to Q1 down by Ethnic Origin?
5) Can you break the answer to Q1 down by Gender?
6) Do you have Mental Health Nurses working with/for your organisation? (eg within police control room)
7) If yes, in what context and is it possible to have access to any policies relating to this use?
Response
1 – 5) Please see the attachment
6 & 7) WMP do have nurses working with us within the Triage office, and also mental health nurses dedicated to work for us within the custody blocks, working in the L and D dept.
The nurses that are attached to Street Triage form part of a tri-service agreement to impact across the broad scope of mental health related incidents. We support them with their work and referrals and they assist us in information sharing to understand risks that patients pose to ourselves and the greater public and diversion and identifying alternate pathways to support those in need or crisis.
To assist further, the senior commissioning manager for NHS England has advised that
“NHS England are responsible for commissioning Liaison & Diversion Services. Across the West Midlands they have 3 L&D Services, each of which are provided by the local Mental Health NHS Trusts. These services are ‘All Age’ and ‘All Vulnerability’ operating across police custody, courts and community. Each service includes practitioners and support time and recovery workers, who will screen, assess and support people to access the most appropriate support and treatment in the community”.
There is no stipulation about only employing mental health nurses. The Liaison & Diversion Service is a vulnerability service, and therefore employs practitioners from a multitude of professions. Some are mental health nurses but not all; some are Speech and Language Therapy nurses and some are social workers. They all need professional registration though.