Mental Welfare Commission releases report on 2017 local visit outcomes

The Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland has released a new report today, outlining the responses to its visits to services and facilities in 2017.

The Commission visits wards, units, and prisons every year. In 2017 the Commission carried out 101 local visits, an increase from the 94 visits in 2016. The majority of these visits are announced, with an aim of at least 25 percent of visits being unannounced.

The majority of the Commission's visits were to NHS wards for adult acute mental health (36%) and NHS mental health wards for older people (25%).

After each visit, we publish a report. Many of these reports contain recommendations, and service managers generally have three months to respond to the recommendations. We received responses to 92% of our recommendations in 2017 by the time of reporting, with the further 8% received later but not included in this report.

The largest number of recommendations were around care planning, review, and person-centred care (74, 27%), or environment (47 17%). Both of these saw a slight increase last year.

Alison Thomson, executive director (nursing) at the Commission, said:

"These local visits are a vital part of the work of the Commission, and we carried out over one hundred visits last year.

"These visits allow us to carry out our work in overseeing the welfare of individuals receiving mental health treatment in Scotland. It was important to see the high level of responses to our recommendations in 2017, and anticipate similar co-operation with our visits in years to come."