Commentary on Sections Section 19 – Arrangements for assessment of former users of secondary mental health services
35.Local mental health partners (see section 1) are required to take all reasonable steps to agree arrangements for responding to requests for assessments from former users of secondary mental health services, and undertaking those assessments.
36.Potentially, different mental health partners may well want to carry out different aspects of the assessment. For example, a local authority is likely to be better placed to decide whether a person might benefit from community care services than an LHB. Therefore the requirement to make arrangements for the carrying out of assessments does not require the whole of each assessment to be carried out by a single partner.