Mr. James Kelly:

We have divided the mental health services into three tiers or sections. One is the approved centres, which have always been governed by the Mental Health Act, and we are developing that in the updated Act. Then there are the 24-hour community residences, which include nurse-led step-down facilities, hospitals and things like that, and all mental health services eventually. We have not included any references to, let us say, community mental health teams, which are a big part of it as well. There are certain structures that can be captured without needing to be in the legislation itself. If someone is accessing a mental health service as a day patient, the multidisciplinary team that is responsible for his or her care does not necessarily need to be explicitly named in the Act to know that it is still part of that care team and part of making decisions about that person's treatment.

The main thing we need to get right with the updated Act is involuntary detention. As it is such a serious thing to do to someone, we have to make sure there are appropriate structures in place and that the person making the decision as to whether someone should or should not be involuntarily detained has the adequate information about the person themselves, about what the services are in the community and that the decision is reviewed. Admission orders for involuntary detention only last two weeks now rather than three weeks. It is about shortening those cases of involuntary detention where possible and ensuring that the reviews are more regular than they are now and that any decision to involuntarily detain someone is not taken lightly.