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Mental health detention

Deprivation of liberty safeguards

The purpose of the IAPDC is to bring about a continuing and sustained reduction in the number and rate of deaths in all forms of state custody in England and Wales.

This covers deaths, which occur in prisons, in or following police custody, immigration detention, the deaths of residents of Approved Premises and the deaths of those detained under the Mental Health Act in hospital.

The principles and lessons learned as part of this work will also apply to the deaths of those detained under the Mental Capacity Act in hospital.

This follows an IAPDC meeting with the CQC in 2015 to discuss their role in monitoring the use of the Mental Capacity Act and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS).

CQC has seen a 10% increase in applications in a year and are hoping that there will also be an improvement in the notifications of about deaths. This follows the Supreme Court judgment in P v Cheshire West and Chester Council and P and Q v Surrey County Council.

The IAPDC believes this judgment redefines the concept of ‘detention’ to include individuals subject to the Mental Capacity Act.

The IAPDC also notes the Chief Coroners’ guidance to coroners about the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards in which he states that the coroner should undertake an investigation into the death of any person subject to DoLS in state detention for the purposes of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009.

The IAPDC explored this at at one of its meetings and included influence of data collection in its work programme in 2015/16.