Mental Health Officers(MHO) survey, Scotland 2011-12

1. Introduction

This Statistics Release presents information in regard to Mental Health Officers (MHOs) in Scotland as national statistics.

The survey data used in this report has been collected annually since 2005, at Local Authority level. The survey has been developed each year with new questions being added when a need for further information has been identified.

The aim of the survey is to collect information about the number of qualified MHOs who are practising within Scotland on the 31^st March for a given year. Practising is defined as using legislation directly in relation to working with clients, or potentially using legislation directly in relation to clients e.g. serving on rotas, during the previous 12 months.

A Mental Health Officer (MHO):

• is a qualified Social Worker with at least two years experience, who has completed a further years study on Mental Disorder and the related Law to achieve accreditation.
• has a range of statutory duties under the Criminal Procedure (Consequential Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1995, the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000 and the Mental Health (Care and Treatment)(Scotland) Act 2003.
• can work as either part of a specialist mental health team, or are integrated into a multidisciplinary (non-mental health specialist) teams. MHOs are responsible for making decisions about admissions to hospital for people who, in their judgement, pose a risk to themselves or others.

This release presents the results of the latest survey to give a picture of:

• The number of practising MHOs in post at 31st March 2012.
• The workload undertaken by MHOs.