Mental Health

Teenagers with mental health problems will no longer be able to be held in police cells under sweeping reforms due to be announced today.

Home Secretary Theresa May is expected to reveal an overhaul of mental health laws in England and Wales.

It comes after a senior Devon and Cornwall Police officer complained the force had had to hold a 16-year-old girl with mental health problems in a cell for two days because there was no hospital bed available anywhere in the UK.

The review is also expected to reduce the maximum length of detention of someone in mental distress from 72 hours to 24, and to change guidance so that police cells can only be used for adults when their behaviour becomes so extreme that they cannot be managed elsewhere.

Mental health campaigners have welcomed the move, but warned more beds are needed if the reforms are to be effective.

One of the country's most senior policemen has condemned the provision of mental health care for children in Britain as "unacceptable."

Paul Netherton, Assistant Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall Police, took the highly unusual step of speaking out on social media after his officers were forced to keep a teenage girl in custody because, he said, there was no proper facility for her anywhere in the UK.

After his outburst, she has been found a bed tonight. But as ITV News reporter Duncan Golestani has more on what her plight has exposed - what some call - a worrying lack of care for the vulnerable

The chief executive of the mental health charity Mind has slammed the "terrible and shameful" situation which meant a girl with mental health issues was held by polic'

Paul Farmer said a police cell was a "completely inappropriate place to put someone who is so unwell", adding: "This whole episode shows how thinly spread NHS mental health services are."

Thousands of people with mental health issues are being taken into police custody every year because of a lack of mental health care provision, a leading charity has warned.

Mark Winstanley, chief executive of Rethink Mental Illness, said while the teenage girl being held for two days was “troubling”, it was far from an isolated incident.

The girl has now been found a place locally, NHS bosses have confirmed.

The police chief who raised awareness of a major shortage in NHS mental health care beds has welcomed news that a teenage girl is to leave police custody after a place was finally found.

Mental health experts have criticised “unacceptable” cutbacks to services in the UK which led to a teenage girl being forced to stay in police custody as the NHS could not accommodate her for two days.

Chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, Dr Peter Carter, said over the past four years more than 3,300 mental health nursing posts had been lost along with 1,500 available beds, despite a 30 per cent rise in the number of patients needing care.

A teenage girl with mental health issues who was being held in police custody due to there being "no beds available in the UK" will be moved this evening, NHS England has said.

A spokesman for NHS said the girl she would be moved to a "place appropriate for her care".