Special Hospitals Service Authority

The Special Hospitals Service Authority was a special health authority of the National Health Service in England from 1989 to 1996. It had responsibility for managing the three high security "special" psychiatric hospitals in England: Ashworth, Broadmoor and Rampton.

The SHSA was established to distance the hospitals from the direct control of the Department of Health. Its Operational Brief set out six principle objectives:

  1. ensure the continuing safety of the public;
  2. ensure the provision of appropriate treatment for patients;
  3. ensure a good quality of life for both patients and staff;
  4. develop the hospitals as centres of excellence for the training of staff in all disciplines in forensic and other branches of psychiatry, psychiatric care and treatment;
  5. develop closer working relationships with local and regional NHS psychiatric services;
  6. promote research into fields related to forensic psychiatry.

This document also stated that the Authority should be "constituted as a small organisation, operating flexibly and maximising delegation of operational responsibility to hospital level, rather than acting as a centralised interventionist body". To this end, a Unit General Manager was appointed to oversee the work of each of the three Hospitals.

The Authority was abolished in 1996 when its commissioning functions passed to the High Security Psychiatric Services Commissioning Board, while each of the Hospitals became independently managed as a Special Health Authority in its own right.

Read more about Special Hospitals Service Authority:  See Also

Famous quotes containing the words special, hospitals, service and/or authority:

    If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works, with all the misconceptions, the omissions, the failures that any finished work of art implies.
    John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

    ... women can never do efficient and general service in hospitals until their dress is prescribed by laws inexorable as those of the Medes and Persians. Then, that dress should be entirely destitute of steel, starch, whale-bone, flounces, and ornaments of all descriptions; should rest on the shoulders, have a skirt from the waist to the ankle, and a waist which leaves room for breathing.
    Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)

    The ability to think straight, some knowledge of the past, some vision of the future, some skill to do useful service, some urge to fit that service into the well-being of the community,—these are the most vital things education must try to produce.
    Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve (1877–1965)

    The authority of any governing institution must stop at its citizens’ skin.
    Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)