{"id":552,"date":"2016-07-09T14:10:25","date_gmt":"2016-07-09T14:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/mental-health\/?p=552"},"modified":"2016-07-11T08:35:32","modified_gmt":"2016-07-11T08:35:32","slug":"mental-health-learning-disability-and-social-care-protecting-human-rights-in-the-austerity-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/mental-health\/mental-health-learning-disability-and-social-care-protecting-human-rights-in-the-austerity-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Mental health, learning disability and social care: protecting human rights in the austerity crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

This conference held in Cardiff on 24 June, was organised by the Centre for Health and Social Care Law and Hafal<\/a>, Wales\u2019 leading charity for people with serious mental illness and their carers.<\/p>\n

The aim was to bring together service users, carers, policy-makers, health and social care practitioners, lawyers and academics to discuss the current environment for people who are trying to access mental health and social care support.<\/p>\n

The law in Wales is gradually diverging from that in England, increasing the need for opportunities to exchange information and views on rights to support and how to get it. The Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 and the Mental Health (Wales) Measure 2010 have radically changed the legal and policy landscape.<\/p>\n

This post highlights some of the issues that emerged from the day. It was the morning after the EU referendum vote, so the atmosphere as we began was somewhat subdued. Nevertheless, whatever the future holds, fundamental international principles in United Nations and European conventions on human rights still underlie the law in Wales.<\/p>\n

The conference was chaired by Richard Jones, an honorary Professor with the School of Law and Politics, and the author of authoritative practitioner works, the Mental Health Act Manual<\/a> and the Mental Capacity Act Manual<\/a>. He introduced the day by emphasising the difficulties for professionals and the public in accessing the law about health and social care, as this is not published in an up-to-date format, except on expensive legal databases. He welcomed the opportunities this conference would offer to examine rights to services.<\/p>\n

The first session was about services supporting the mental health and emotional wellbeing of children and young people. This topic has received considerable public attention in recent weeks. For example the Centre for Mental Health \u2018Missed Opportunities\u2019 research review<\/a> found that children waited an average of ten years between starting to have difficulties and receiving treatment, and three-quarters of parents who sought help were not getting any.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, a parliamentary committee in England reported that children in care<\/a> were particularly poorly served by child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), despite high rates of mental disorder in that group.<\/p>\n

In Wales, these problems are well known and have led to the establishment of the \u2018Together for Children and Young People\u2019 programme (T4CYP)<\/a>, a multi-agency service improvement programme working to consider ways to reshape, remodel and refocus the emotional and mental health services provided for children and young people.<\/p>\n

Speakers who took part in this session were mental health campaigner, Mair Elliott; Jane Williams of Swansea University; and Camilla Parker and Julie Doughty from Cardiff University. Mair is a trustee of Hafal<\/a> and co-author of the Making Sense report<\/a>, which is a response by young people to the T4CYP. She has been giving evidence and working with Welsh Government since 2012 on identifying what needs to be improved in provision of services for young people.<\/p>\n

She pointed out the proportionately low spend on CAMHS, although it is in childhood that many people\u2019s problems start, and the lack of data on whether local health boards are fulfilling their remit. The Making Sense <\/em>report also notes that the heart of the problem lies in the doubling of referrals to CAMHS between 2010 and 2014, although not all these children are best served by those specialist services. The report\u2019s recommendations include:<\/p>\n