David

During the inquest last December after the death of David Stacey in Leicester in 2017, his family requested he be known throughout the legal proceedings by his first name. The story behind David’s death is tragic and will be familiar to all AMHPs, police officers and mental health professionals across the country. The inquest returned […]

Twenty Nineteen

The forthcoming year is the sixtieth birthday of the first piece of modern mental health legislation – the Mental Health Act 1959. It’s worth noting this milestone, in my opinion, because sixty years on we are still struggling to think about how we give effect in the real world to some of its requirements. Section […]

Stress-Testing Contingencies

About a decade ago, I was pottering about as the duty inspector in south Birmingham when a full-scale police mobilisation of public order units was ordered. This involves having to get together a sergeant and seven constables on to van, all of them ‘level two trained’ in public order tactics – riot police, to you […]