POLICY: Quality Standards for Adult Secondary Mental Health Services

As a member of the Quality and Safety Board (QSB), RCN Scotland has been involved in the preliminary discussions on the content of the Quality Standards for Adult Secondary Mental Health Services (‘the standards’). We welcome the draft standards and this opportunity to comment on them formally.

We comment on the draft standards, highlighting issues to do with workforce, the involvement of those with lived experience, accessible language, possible tensions within the standards, the therapeutic underpinning of the standards, the role of adult secondary mental health services with respect to the wider determinants of health and health inequality and the link between the standards and the Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act 2019.