Functions
The Commission was a monitoring body rather than an inspectorate or regulator. Its concern was primarily the legality of detention and the protection of individuals' human rights. In addition to a visiting programme, the Commission provided important safeguards to patients who lack capacity or refuse to consent to treatment, through the Second Opinion Appointed Doctor Service.
Its functions were:
- to keep under review the operation of the Mental Health Act 1983 in respect of patients detained or liable to be detained under that Act
- to visit and interview, in private, patients detained under the Mental Health Act in hospitals and mental nursing homes
- to consider the investigation of complaints where these fall within the Commission's remit
- to review decisions to withhold the mail of patients detained in the High Security Hospitals
- to appoint registered medical practitioners and others to give second opinions in cases where this is required by the Mental Health Act
- to publish and lay before Parliament a report every 2 years
- to monitor the implementation of the Code of Practice and propose amendments to Ministers
In addition, the Commission was encouraged by the Secretary of State to advise on policy matters that fall within the Commission's remit.
Read more about this topic: Mental Health Act Commission
Famous quotes containing the word functions:
“If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thanks to the natural support it will find in the stupidity of the multitude. It must return to its real task, which is to be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“Nobody is so constituted as to be able to live everywhere and anywhere; and he who has great duties to perform, which lay claim to all his strength, has, in this respect, a very limited choice. The influence of climate upon the bodily functions ... extends so far, that a blunder in the choice of locality and climate is able not only to alienate a man from his actual duty, but also to withhold it from him altogether, so that he never even comes face to face with it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)