Ms Fiona Coyle:

Care plans already exist. This area is monitored by the Mental Health Commission. Recent reports have shown that compliance with individual care plans has been not very strong over recent years and has declined. This is one of the reasons Mental Health Reform has advocated for the right to a care and recovery plan to be put on a statutory footing. In terms of oversight, that is already contained in Mental Health Commission reports, but we would hope that with the strengthened statutory footing of such it would, perhaps, lead to increases in adherence. This cannot be a tick box exercise. There is further work needed on what a care and recovery plan looks like, which is individual to each person. Each person has his or her own recovery journey. That is a piece of work that we would recommend could be done over the coming years to support the centres in rolling this out and ensuring the service users have access to a really strong care and recovery plan process.

On how the plans relate to the assisted decision-making, I will ask Ms Grogan to respond.