This petition was submitted during the 2019-2024 parliament

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Petition Introduce a fourth emergency service 'mental health rescue'

Introduce a fourth emergency service, "Mental health rescue".

To be able to respond to people in crises and help them.

People specifically trained in the area of mental health, thus helping the person in crises and freeing up other resources within the emergency services.

More details

Having a Fourth emergency service for mental health should:

* Help the person with trained help that specialises in mental health.

* Save lives

* Signpost to other agencies only when absolutely necessary

* Free up resources for the ambulance service

* Free up resources for the police service

* Be specific and direct for the caller to ask for using the 999 service.

This petition is closed This petition ran for 6 months

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Government urged to strengthen draft Mental Health Bill by parliamentary committee

A group of MPs and members of the House of Lords has published a report looking at the Government's draft Mental Health Bill. They have called for changes to the draft Bill to address rising numbers of people detained under the Mental Health Act and to tackle racial inequalities.

Specific changes the report calls for include:

  • The creation of a new statutory Mental Health Commissioner to monitor mental health reforms
  • Including respect for racial equality in the Bill
  • Improving how data on detentions under the Mental Health Act is collected and monitored
  • Abolishing Community Treatment Orders for civil patients
  • Strengthening duties regarding community services for people with learning disabilities and autistic people
  • Giving patients who are or have been detained the right to request an advance choice document is drawn up

The report was produced by the Joint Committee on the Draft Mental Health Bill, a cross-party group of MPs and members from the House of Lords that was appointed to consider the Government's draft Bill to reform the Mental Health Act 1983

What is a draft Bill?

A draft Bill is published to enable 'pre-legislative scrutiny', which is the detailed examination of an early draft of legislation. This is done by a parliamentary select committee before the final Bill is drawn up by the Government.

What happens next?

With the publication of its report the Joint Committee’s work is finished.

The Government now must respond to the committee's report, and draw up a final version of the Mental Health Bill. It is up to the Government when to publish a final version of this Bill, and introduce it in Parliament.

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