Terms of Reference for
the National Preventive Mechanism - Mental Health Network
1. Introduction
Since its establishment in 2009 the bodies that make up the UK NPM have monitored whether the UK government meets its UN Treaty obligations regarding the treatment of anyone held in any form of custody.
Preventing the ill treatment of people who are detained as a result of mental illness constitutes a large part of the NPM’s work. To allow additional specialist discussion the NPM members who inspect, regulate and/or visit mental health detention have established a sub-group to offer a forum for additional detailed consideration of the aspects of the NPM business plan that are relevant to mental health detention in the UK.
The sub-group offers organisations with responsibilities for the monitoring and protection of people in health and social care detention settings to work collaboratively on issues with specific mental health impacts.
2. Chairing, governance, reporting and membership
The NPM sub-group chair will rotate between network members every 12 months. The organisation chairing the sub-group will provide secretariat support.
It will report to the NPM Steering Group and business meetings, and meet three times a year. These meetings will be co-ordinated with the business group meetings.
The sub-group will be open to NPM members with an interest in people in places of mental health detention.
Meeting topics will be generated by members of the group and meeting agendas and papers circulated in advance. The sub-group agenda will be set by the chair who will liaise with the NPM Coordinator. Other people may be invited to join group meetings on a one-off basis to aid discussion on particular topics.
The sub-group will not have any delegated sign off processes in place from the NPM business meeting or steering group. All discussion and actions will need to be agreed in accordance with each organisation’s local governance processes including information governance procedures.
Information will be shared at sub group meetings and via electronic communications. It is each member’s responsibility to make it clear where a matter shall remain confidential and not for discussion outside the group. When sharing documents members should make it clear if there is a restriction to circulation and/or use of documents
3. Purpose and Objectives
The objective of the sub-group is to provide a forum for discussion and debate on topics affecting people in health and social care detention.
The group aims to:
· Seek a coordinated approach to MH issues and contribution to the NPM agenda and business plan
· Enable a peer-review approach to identification of development areas and improvement processes
· Share information on the work of the NPM bodies and increase transparency of each other’s organisational approach to MH monitoring
· Offer members access to specialist knowledge
· Provide an opportunity to discuss cross border issues and implications for members
· Identify possibilities for sharing resources for research, training and development e.g. conferences, seminars, e-learning
· Identify common issues and interests
· Discuss benchmarking possibilities to support the available evidence-base for local policy and intelligence
4. Term and review procedures
The NPM steering group will review the effectiveness and purpose of the sub-group after the initial three meetings, then annually thereafter, to ensure continuing relevance and ongoing development of the mental health network sub-group of the UK NPM.
The next review is due in March 2016
Approved by the MH Network Members: 10 March 2015
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