Mental Health Scrutiny & Assurance Review

A national review of the scrutiny and assurance of mental health services in Scotland, conducted by a team from the School of Forensic Mental Health.

The Network are delighted to see the publication of this Mental Health Scrutiny and Assurance Review. Across 2022, a small team from within the School of Forensic Mental Health undertook this significant piece of work on behalf of Scottish Government.

The aim of the review was to inform the Scottish Government’s considerations around the scrutiny and assurance of mental health services – predominantly secondary services – mapping current arrangements and possible improvements to strengthen these. This work will contribute to the future of scrutiny and assurance of mental health services in Scotland, ensuring they are safe, timely, effective, person-centred and delivered for service users in equitable ways.

The report highlights a range of data which demonstrate both strengths and areas for improvement that exist in current systems and processes. Whilst a shared passion and desire for success was evident, the report highlights clear differences of opinion in relation to how successful current practices are, and strong views on the need for change and improvement. In particular, there were calls for more external scrutiny of CAMHS, Intellectual Disability and Community mental health services. The report concludes with 15 recommendations and suggested solutions to issues raised with regard to current systems and processes.