 We received a letter today from a local Trust. This said that they have been receiving requests from patients about the qualifications of legal representatives advertising their services for Tribunal representation, and whether they are members of the Law Society Panel. TheTrust was seeking further information to be supplied to them so that their patients could "make an informed choice" about the person who would be representing them at their Mental Health Review Tribunal. |
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CategoriesCTOs Tribunal MP v Mersey Care NHS Trust [2011] UKUT 107 (AACLegal aid cuts, Reform of legal aid, House of Commons Justice Committee Report Patients' experience of Mental Health Tribunals, Report of Administrative Justice and Tribunal's Qualifications of legal representatives RN v CC (2011) UKUT x (AAC, CTOs S.2, Mental Health Act, Mental Health Law, Tribunal, Application, Tammy Groves,R (Modaresi) v SSH Zombification, Tony Zigmond, Increase in Admissions under the Mental Health Act 1983, CTOs |
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A recent case before the Upper Tier Tribunal suggests that perhaps not all Tribunalsdolove CTOs (community treatment orders).
When CTOs first came out, I was involved in a few cases where Tribunals foolishly ordered a deferred discharge of a patient who was detained on s.3 of the Mental Health Act 1983, with the express intent that this was to facilitate the patient being made subject to a CTO instead. What the Tribunal had failed to grasp that a CTO is dependent on a S.3 being in existence - the s.3 goes “dormant” when the CTO is implemented, and can spring back into existence if the CTO is revoked. Accordingly at the time that the deferred discharge becomes effective, any CTO that has been put in place by that date is automatically discharged too.
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Well, I figured it was high time I joined the growing army of Bloggers, so here it is, the Mental Health Law Blog! The title gives a generous clue to what makes this different from other Blogs - the focus is on mental health, and in particular mental health law. Mental health law tends to be the “poor relation” in the legal field; it’s not particularly sexy, when it hits the newspapers it is rarely in a good way, and those at the receiving end of it do not tend to have much of a voice.
