Special hospital guides

The government has published national standards for the
provision of social care services in the three special hospitals
Ashworth, Broadmoor and Rampton.

The standards follow recommendations in last year’s Lewis
Report, which reviewed social work in the three hospitals, plus
recent Social Services Inspectorate reports into the individual
social work services.

The Lewis Report recommended that the social work service within
the three hospitals should be reconfigured into a social care
service that allows for the employment or secondment of people
other than social workers who have specialist skills and knowledge
in dealing with mentally disordered offenders.

Such specialists would include probation officers, and those
with skills in child protection work, learning difficulties or
disabilities, welfare rights and benefits, and rehabilitation.

Standards 1 and 4 stress the development of multi-agency public
protection panels (Mapps) to provide agencies with a concern for
in-patients with a community forum for assessing and managing
risk.

n Social Services Inspectorate, National Standards for the
Provision of Social Care Services in the High Security Hospitals
from www.doh.gov.uk/scg/highsecurity.htm