Girls under 14 sectioned

Care Quality Commission did not have the information requested.

Dear Care Quality Commission,

1. How many female Birmingham residents, aged between 12 or 13 years have been detained under the mental health act since 1 January 2013 to date?

2. Of those children relevant to question 1, please provide the following information:

A. How many had never been the subject of a care order or interim care order?
B. Did the parent or guardian consent to the detention?
C. How long did the detention last?
D. Was a diagnosis made of mental illness/ mental disorder?
E. how long was the child assessed before being diagnosed?
F. How many children were inpatients within Birmingham?
G. How many were living with their natural/birth mother immediately prior to being sectioned?
H. What diagnosis was made?
I. What drugs were the children given?

4. Are children who are detained under the mental health act provided an independent advocate?

5. What procedures are in place to ensure children are not wrongfully detained?

Yours faithfully,

Sophie

Information Access, Care Quality Commission

4 November 2013

 

Our Ref: CQC IAT 2013 1072

 

Dear Sophie

 

We are writing in response to your correspondence dated 01 November 2013
in which you made a request for information in accordance with the Freedom
of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

 

Requested information:

 

“1.  How many female Birmingham residents, aged between 12 or 13 years
have been detained under the mental health act since 1 January 2013 to
date?

 

2.  Of those children relevant to question 1, please provide the following
information:

 

A.  How many had never been the subject of a care order or interim care
order?

B.  Did the parent or guardian consent to the detention?

C.  How long did the detention last?

D.  Was a diagnosis made of mental illness/ mental disorder?

E.  How long was the child assessed before being diagnosed?

F.  How many children were inpatients within Birmingham?

G.  How many were living with their natural/birth mother immediately prior
to being sectioned?

H. What diagnosis was made?

I.  What drugs were the children given?

 

4.  Are children who are detained under the mental health act provided an
independent advocate?

 

5.  What procedures are in place to ensure children are not wrongfully
detained?”

 

The Information Access team has now processed your request; we can inform
you that we do not hold the requested information.

 

It may be useful to explain to you the role of CQC, and what providers
must notify CQC about.

 

Care Quality Commission

 

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health
and social care services in England.

 

We make sure hospitals, care homes, dental and GP surgeries, and all other
care services in England provide people with safe, effective,
compassionate and high-quality care, and we encourage them to make
improvements.

 

We do this by inspecting services and publishing the results on our
website to help individuals make better decisions about the care and
treatment they receive.

 

CQC is a non-departmental public body, overseen by the Department of
Health, established under the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

 

CQC became fully operational on 1 April 2009 when it took over the
activities of the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI), the
Healthcare Commission (HC) and the Mental Health Act Commission (MHAC).

 

We have published information about who we are, what we do and how we do
it, on our website:

 

[1]www.cqc.org.uk/public/about-us

 

We register health and adult social care services across England and we
inspect them to check whether or not important standards of quality and
safety are being met. Our inspections take place regularly and at any time
in response to concerns. They are almost always unannounced.

  

These standards are known as the "Essential standards of quality and
safety" but also commonly referred to as the "national standards" or
"government standards". You can view or download a copy of the standards
from our website:

 

[2]www.cqc.org.uk/organisations-we-regulate/registered-services/guidance-meeting-standards

 

Part of Essential Standards requires that all services registered under
the Health and Social Care Act 2008 must notify CQC about a number of
changes, events and incidents affecting their service or the people who
use it.

 

The requirements associated with notifications relating to the Mental
Health Act are explained on our website at:

 

[3]http://www.cqc.org.uk/organisations-we-r...

 

You will see that providers have to notify CQC about events such as the
death of a detained patient, or of an unauthorised absence of a detained
patient from a secure unit.  However, there is no requirement to inform
CQC when a person of a certain age is detained.

 

The only time CQC would be informed about the detention of a young person
is if they were detained on to an adult ward. 

 

Therefore, we do not hold information that would answer questions 1 and 2
of your request, as we are not informed of every occasion when a child
between the age of 12 and 13 is detained.

 

We also do not hold information relating to question 4 of your request, as
we are not informed when detained patients take up their right to an
Independent Mental Health Advocate (IMHA).

 

Although we aren’t notified when individual patients are detained, CQC is
aware which services are registered for the relevant registered activity,
and our Mental Health Act Operations team has a programme of activity
which aims to visit all wards that care for detained patients.  We then
check that the patients detained on those wards have been detained
lawfully and that their rights and interests have been upheld. 

In relation to question 5 of your request, we have published information
on our website that explains what we do to protect the rights of those
people who are detained under the Mental Health Act.

 

[4]http://www.cqc.org.uk/sites/default/file...

 

 

Advice and Assistance:

 

Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 states that public
authorities (such as CQC) must provide reasonable advice and assistance to
applicants.

 

As we have explained above, CQC are not able to provide you with figures
relating to detained patients, as providers do not have to notify CQC when
a patient is detained. 

 

In order to find this out, we would suggest you make a request to Mental
Health Services in the Birmingham area directly.

 

You can also find out more about how we monitor the use of the Mental
Health Act by reading our annual reports;

 

[5]http://www.cqc.org.uk/public/reports-sur...

 

For information relating to IMHAs, you may also wish to contact the
relevant IMHA service for the Birmingham area.  You can visit their
website at:

 

[6]http://www.pohwer.net/our-services/indep...

 

We hope you find this information useful.

 

CQC will always endeavour to provide the highest quality responses to
requests for information and seek to provide responses that are as helpful
as possible. We would therefore appreciate it if you can take some time to
complete our online feedback form by visiting the following website:

 

[7]https://webdataforms.cqc.org.uk/Checkbox...

 

The information you provide will be held securely and only used for the
purposes of improving the Information Rights service that CQC provide.

 

If you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact the team, on the
telephone number provided, quoting our reference number.

 

Yours sincerely

 

 

Amy E Hancock

 

Information Access Officer

Governance and Legal Services

Care Quality Commission

Floor 7, Citygate

Gallowgate

Newcastle Upon Tyne

NE1 4PA

 

Tel: 0191 233 3602

Fax: 01484 772 992

 

E-mail: [8][email address]

 

**************************************************************

Statutory requests for information made pursuant to access to information
legislation, such as the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Freedom of
Information Act 2000, should be sent to [9][CQC request email]

 

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