Support for amendments to Health and Wellbeing Bill

Revolving Doors Agency has supported a briefing submitted to the House of Lords committee considering amendments to the Health and Social Care bill. The briefing, published by the Centre for Mental Health, Mental Health Foundation, Mind, Rethink Mental Illness and the Royal College of Psychiatrists, supports amendments to the bill which would encourage Health and Wellbeing Boards to work more closely with a wide range of agencies in order to improve health and wellbeing.

In particular, we support amendments tabled by Lord Ramsbotham, Baroness Finlay, Lord Brooke and Lord Wigley which would make police, probation and representatives of drug and alcohol services statutory members of Health and Wellbeing Boards. In support of these proposed changes, Revolving Doors’ chief executive, Dominic Williamson said:

“These amendments provide an excellent opportunity to bring local services together to tackle the significant health inequalities experienced by offenders, and to improve community safety.

“Crucially, solutions to the challenges of reoffending and community safety often lie outside the criminal justice system. Lack of access to appropriate health and social care often perpetuates a cycle of crisis and crime, while effective health and social care interventions can be critical in enabling people to break free of this cycle.

“These amendments provide a key opportunity to bringing together criminal justice, substance misuse and health and social care agencies on a statutory footing. This is an essential step in “hardwiring” the cooperation needed across sectors to effectively respond to the health and social care needs of offenders and the whole community.”

You can download the briefing here.