Mental Health and Reducing Restrictive Practice
Providing top-quality mental health services is top of our agenda at Health Connections Patient Transport Service. We set ourselves high standards on how we deliver care and we ensure we treat all our clients with dignity and respect.
How do we deliver a high-quality mental health service?
What we do, and how we do it is set out in our Statement of Purpose. In this document we say that ‘We believe strongly in engagement and distraction as a means of assessing and managing individuals proactively, this we believe, enables us to use least restrictive practice, reducing stigma and optimising the individual’s experience’
No client is the same and has the same needs. Therefore it is essential that we treat every client as an individual and they receive a personalised service.
What is Restrictive Practice?
A restrictive practice is an activity which forces someone to do something they don’t want to do. Alternatively, it stops someone from doing something they do want to do.
Restrictive practices can either be very obvious or sometimes may be more subtle. They might be planned in advance, or used in response to an emergency situation. Examples of restrictive practices include:
- ‘blanket rules’ such as the routine locking of doors
- delivering planned or unplanned care and treatments, such as medication which sedates people
- Using physical intervention
Reducing Restrictive Practice
At Health Connections, we believe that having a positive and therapeutic culture reduces the need for restrictive practice. Therefore, we train all our staff to a high standard and provide them with support and guidance. By using least restrictive practice we can ensure we are delivering person-centred care, which puts the needs of the client first. We want to help people with their recovery and wellbeing while preserving their dignity, rights and freedoms as much as possible.