Mental Health Code of Practice (Hansard, 19 January 1999)

§ Mr. Hutton

Paragraph 26.3 of the revised Mental Health Act Code of Practice, laid before Parliament on 3 December 1998, was included to ensure that visits by a child to a patient detained under the Mental Health Act 1983 are considered in relation to the child's best interests as well as the patient's, and that such decisions are recorded and monitored. The child should be treated as an individual with his or her own needs, and any decision to allow a child to visit a patient should be a positive one that it would be in their best interests.

Directions have already been issued to the three special hospitals regarding arrangements for visits by children. We intend to issue separate guidance as soon as possible to assist all other hospitals that take detained patients, and social services departments, in drawing up child visiting policies. This will be subject to prior consultation. Decisions on whether a child should visit will be the responsibility of the hospital managers, and hospital policies will set out the arrangements for deciding whether a child should visit a patient. Such arrangements will need to take account of the significant role that those 427W with parental responsibility have in allowing such visits. Written hospital policies will also set out those circumstances when parental consent alone will be sufficient to allow a child to visit a patient, and where this is not sufficient, who else should be involved in the decision-making process.

Recording of visits will allow hospital staff, with local social services departments, to monitor visits and regularly review the desirability of continuing visits by a child should the particular circumstances surrounding the patient, or the ward, change. The environment in which visits by children take place will be important when considering the child's best interests.

Paragraph 26.3 of the Code is drafted in wide terms to ensure that all visits by children are considered in this way. In the majority of cases, decisions will be straightforward, and will not affect current visiting practices. However, where hospitals or units care for mentally disordered offenders or those patients with more severe forms of mental illness policies on visiting will need to be more detailed and rigorously enforced.