Earlier this year, the National Police Chiefs Council issued guidance on the topic of “Restricted Patients under s37 and s41 Who Abscond”.  This is accompanied by a flowchart, summarising the ten page guidance document. There are a few issues with this document, which I feel obliged to highlight — Firstly, despite the title indicating the […]

A recent query from an officer and it made me think if someone is asking this, perhaps others are wondering or seeing the same thing? “We are experiencing a relatively recent trend of our local hospital applying a level of pressure to s136 individuals when we are in attendance there with them (we will have […]

A number of mental health professionals have expressed concern something like this would happen and I mentioned recently that some were seeing signs of what I called “over-push”: an Approved Mental Health Professional (AMHP) in Wales has been punched whilst attending a premises to conduct a Mental Health Act assessment, having asked for police support […]