My Lords, I shall speak in the context of the passages in the gracious Speech which refer to issues of policing and mental health. In particular, I ask the Minister to consider the following example of where our current legislation is failing a very vulnerable section of our community, and to encourage the Government to take steps to remedy it.
I am intimately familiar with the case of one young man who has been diagnosed with high-functioning autism and ADHD. As a consequence of his condition, adulthood has proved a struggle for him and he has been unable to hold down a meaningful job or to
maintain a circle of friends. In the pursuit of craving friendship and social acceptance, he was taken advantage of, which resulted in drug taking, which has made him psychotic.
His parents attempted to have him treated but it proved impossible for them to obtain mental health support and services during the period in which his condition continued to deteriorate. The result was that he was sectioned several times under Section 136 and detained on four occasions in a police cell, which only exacerbated his problems. No mental health support of any sort was offered to him at any stage, nor was there any follow-up. He was sent home on each occasion, and the process continued until his condition deteriorated so much that he broke the law and was imprisoned.
His parents saw all this happening like a blow on a bruise. Behavioural disorders of this sort can result in the use of drugs as a form of self-medication and perpetrators with mental health disorders are not positively discriminated against until it is too late. Intervention, support and follow-up would have been far more likely to prevent the outcome which resulted in this young man going to prison. Furthermore, the police and, indeed, prison officers were being asked to devote a high degree of their time to dealing with a mental health issue for which they are not adequately trained. On 26 November last year in the Daily Telegraph, the chairman of the Police Federation pointed out that 40% of the time of police officers is now taken up with dealing with people with mental health issues as opposed to catching or containing criminals. At the most basic level, unnecessary costs are being incurred by the taxpayer, which could and should be avoided by a more understanding society.
I ask the Minister—perhaps in conjunction with the department of the noble Baroness, Lady Blackwood —to provide some comfort that, with the national statistics showing a clear increase in mental health problems of this sort, not only new funding but new organisational thinking will be provided by the Government for those with behavioural disorders as opposed to psychiatric illness, perhaps along the lines of supporting more Safe Haven initiatives. This funding and thinking should be designed to help not only individual sufferers but their parents and helpers, who can see a problem becoming a crisis but can find no one to listen to them and who have no channel to enable them to prevent the befalling of their own personal disaster.
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