SUPERVISED COMMUNITY TREATMENT

Supervised Community Treatment allows for suitable patients to be treated in the community rather than under detention in hospital.

What is it?

It only applies to patients who are detained under Section 3. Supervised Community Treatment is where you are allowed to leave hospital but you will be expected to keep on having treatment, and there could be other conditions, like where you must live.  If necessary, you can be made to come back to hospital.

Who decides?

Your Responsible Clinician, with the agreement of an Approved Mental Health Professional (AMHP), may decide that you do not need to stay in hospital to be treated, but that you should be on supervised community treatment.

Both of them must be satisfied that you need medical treatment for your mental disorder for your own health or safety or for the protection of other people, and that the right treatment is, or would be, available in the community.

How can Supervised Community Treatment be ended?

The Supervised Community Treatment can be ended:

•   If the period for which it was set runs out and it isn’t extended.

•   By discharging it - in other words the Responsible Clinician, the Hospital Managers or the Tribunal deciding that you don’t need to be on it any more.

•   If your Responsible Clinician recalls you to hospital and then agrees with an AMHP that you need to stay for more than 72 hours.  This is called “revocation” and means you would be detained again on Section 3.

Your Responsible Clinician could tell you to come back to hospital, for example if you stopped treatment and that put your mental health at risk. This is called being “recalled” to hospital.

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Ready Steady Change Programme

Upgrade in 2008 funded by the National Institute for Mental Health in England
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