The Home Office together with their colleagues in the Department of Health have provided support mental health professionals and the police in England and Wales to enable them to work together to co-ordinate the right responses to people experiencing a mental health crisis.

Between October 2013 and May 2015 the Department of Health funded Street Triage pilots in nine areas. NHS England subsequently published an evaluation into its effectiveness in November 2015. Street Triage schemes now operate in over 25 police force areas for which funding is provided by local partners for example Police and Crime Commissioners and Clinical Commissioning Groups. The Home Office has awarded £155,220 through the Police Innovation Fund to support a North Wales Police Mental Health Triage project. North Wales Police will evaluate the work following the end of the Home Office funding period on 31 March 2017.

Police forces may apply for future funding for Street Triage through the Police Transformation Fund.

For those arrested in England on suspicion of committing an offence and taken to police custody Liaison and Diversion schemes, commissioned by NHS England to a national model, operate in over 50% of police forces areas and will be rolled out nationally by 2020/21. These schemes aim to identify, assess and refer people with mental health and other complex needs into appropriate support and treatment and where appropriate may influence sentencing options. The Department of Health has funded an evaluation into the effectiveness of Liaison and Diversion which is due to report in 2019.

Crisis Care Concordat partnerships have been established in England and Wales since 2015 and play a pivotal role in coordinating these approaches and improving mental health crisis care pathways. Whilst financial support for Mind’s secretariat has been withdrawn, we remain committed to ensuring the Crisis Care Concordat continues to progress and a national steering group is taking this forward.

To assess the adequacy of the legislative framework a joint review of policing powers within the Mental Health Act 1983 was conducted by the Home Office and Department of Health during 2014. Following this review both the Home Office and Department of Health are engaged in preparations for forthcoming changes to the Mental Health Act 1983 as contained in the Policing and Crime Act 2017 and which are designed to further improve the response to those in mental health crisis.

To support these legislative provisions we have recently allocated some £15m in funding to 88 projects across 40 Crisis Care Concordat partnerships to improve places of safety provision and ensure that people in mental health crisis are not detained in police stations. A further £15m of funding has been announced to continue this work.

These steps have been successful in reducing the use of cells and National Police Chiefs Council data highlighted a 54% reduction in the use of cells as places of safety from 2014/15 (4,537 occasions) - 2015/16 (2,100 occasions).