Scottish mental health law review: our response

Proposed Programme Scope

The proposed scope of the Programme is as follows:

• Enhancing rights protections broadly for people who are experiencing mental illness and adults who lack capacity.
• A focus on reforming mental health and capacity law to better respect and uphold rights for people with a learning disability and autistic people.
• A focus on children and young people as well as older adults, and people within the forensic system.
• A focus on those at highest risks of marginalisation and exclusion including minority ethnic communities; women and girls, LGBT+ communities.

Taking the Review as a starting point for reform, we will:

1. Improve rights protections within mental health and capacity law to better align with international human rights standards.

2. Help to further embed a human rights culture across our policies and wider practices.

3. Ensure that there are clear legal safeguards and strong systems of accountability.