Autism and learning disabilities must no longer be used as conditions that justify placing people in long-term hospitals.
That’s the aim of the new draft Mental Health Bill.
And MPs have been weighing up measures in the Bill designed to prevent people with autism and learning disabilities from ending up in mental health hospitals.
The Joint Committee of the draft Mental Health Bill looked at whether planned changes to the law are enough to keep people out of hospitals.
It ‘will not end the crisis’
Tim Nicholls is head of research with the National Autistic Society.
He told the committee that though changing the definition of who can be detained is a step in the right direction, it “will not end the crisis” of people being stuck in a mental health hospital for years on end.
Nicholls added: “It will take the right services in the community — be those both mental health community services and social care services, too.”
The latest statistics show there are 1,965 people with learning disabilities and/or autism in hospitals. Just over half (57 per cent) have been there for more than two years.
Entire basis ‘wrong’
Simone Aspis is the project manager of Free our People Now. The organisation aims to help people live in homes rather than hospitals.
She said the entire basis of the draft bill is wrong because it assumes there is a “right or wrong way of being, feeling and thinking and seeing the world”.
Aspis said it was important to question the assumption of “compulsory treatment of all people, including people who are labelled as autistic and people with learning difficulties”.
Related:
- New laws will target long-stay hospitals
- Long-stay hospitals ‘must close’
- Dismay at inaction over assessment units
- Scandal of decade-long hospital stays
- ‘Abject failure’ of hospital plan
- Huge surge in hospitals using restraint
- Social workers aim to cut hospital stays
- Still stuck in mental health hospitals
- Spotlight on hospital care
- Families fight detention ‘scandal’
Published: 25 October 2022
