Independent investigation: Derek Salmon, Colchester (2002)

That the Trust should review the procedure for arranging assessments under, and for the purposes of, the Mental Health Act 1983 ("MHA assessments"), to ensure both that the process is as efficient as it reasonably can be and that it is clearly understood and applied by all officers involved in arranging MHA assessments.

That the Trust should review its procedures for the transmission of a patient's previous history and supporting documentation to an approved doctor and social worker making an MHA assessment, in order to ensure that the doctor and social worker have before them all the information that they may need to carry out their statutory tasks properly, and should ensure that those procedures are fully understood and implemented by all officers concerned. Where, as in this case, the patient is already receiving in-patient treatment in a surgical or medical ward, those procedures need to take account of the fact that the records from that ward may be of assistance to the officers carrying out an assessment.

That the Trust should ensure that it has a clear Risk Assessment policy and supporting literature in mandatory use by its staff throughout its area.

That, as certain of the Trust's officers whom we met told us that staff working in one part of the Trust's area, for example Chelmsford, did not know about the practices applying in another part of the area, such as Colchester, the Trust should ensure that, wherever possible, its working practices are unified throughout the whole of its area and are known to and understood by all staff, as unified practices greatly facilitate the delivery of services to the clients of the Trust.