Access to Justice: Children Detained under the Mental Health Act 1983

The Mental Health Act 1983 is the primary legislation operating in England and Wales regulating the ‘reception, care and treatment of mentally disordered patients’. Children who are being detained in hospitals under the provisions of the 1983 Act have the right to be provided with an explanation of their legal status and to include details of which section they are subject to, the effect of the detention and also their rights to apply for review of their continued detention. The Council of Europe Guidelines on Child Friendly Justice require that such information should be made available in a manner adapted to their age and maturity, in a language that they can understand, in a gender- and culture-sensitive form and it should be given directly to children as well as their parents. Despite Brexit, the UK is not planning to leave the Council of Europe. Therefore, the Guidelines potentially represent a crucial element of supporting children’s rights in relation to access to justice after the UK has left the EU. The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which young people detained under the Mental Health Act 1983 had received appropriate information regarding their legal rights in a manner which complies with the principles and provisions of the Guidelines on Child Friendly Justice. In particular this paper is concerned with the information children received in relation to their right to apply to a Tribunal to be
discharged. A patient must apply to the Tribunal for discharge within 14 days if they have been admitted for assessment and within 6 months if they have been admitted for treatment. Patients cannot apply to be discharged if they have
missed the deadline. Therefore, it is important that young people have access to timely and comprehensible ageappropriate information about the nature of their detention and their right to apply to be discharged. In order to
evaluate the extent to which young people are receiving this information, Freedom of Information requests were sent to NHS Trusts to request the information they were providing to young people detained under the Mental Health Act 1983regarding their right to appeal to the Mental Health Tribunal. This presentation will discuss the extent to which it was found that NHS Trusts were complying with Guidelines on Child Friendly Justice requirements.