---

Mental Health Bill [HL]

I have a very brief speech. Throughout the National Health Service there have for many years been problems of accommodation for adolescents. It is difficult to treat adolescents with young children and babies in paediatric wards, and it is equally inappropriate to treat young people in adult wards, as has been said. I want to give noble Lords a few positive examples. There is a splendid organisation called Body and Soul providing support for people with HIV and AIDS. In its work it has found that adolescents need their own space and help, away from children and adults. A hospice for children in Yorkshire has made a section for adolescents needing hospice care. It was so important for them to have their own accommodation with their age group. In young offender institutions, adolescents are now separated from the over-18s. It is even more important for young, mentally ill adolescents to have their own wards. Many of them have problems associated with puberty. Putting young people in adult wards with mentally ill adult patients could be to put them at risk. With so much emphasis placed these days on health and safety, who, can I ask the Minister, does the risk assessments for these young and vulnerable adults, especially given staff shortages in many hospitals at night? Why should mentally ill young people, who will have more problems than anyone else, not be treated in the same way as other groups such as the ones I have mentioned—and whose treatment I have found to be satisfactory?