How are the changes to the Mental Health Act 2025 landing, and how can SCIE support?

What happens next?

The Mental Health Act 2025 aims to modernise, strengthen people’s rights and maximise choice, autonomy and dignity. Codes of practice, offering guidance on how professions should carry out their responsibilities under the Mental Health Act 2025 are being developed this year—planning for implementation will be something that organisations will be starting to contemplate. While this means that any changes in practice won’t be immediate, this does give time to thoroughly enquire and collaborate both with those working in the sector and those drawing on care and support, regarding what they see coming down the path and where they most need support in managing the incoming changes.

Starting from the ground up will be fundamental in creating support tools that are truly meaningful, effective and impactful—redesigning systems and models of care that drastically improve the experiences of people receiving support for serious mental health issues.

SCIE’s work

Co-production with people with lived experience of social care underpins and informs what we do at SCIE—that is what enables us to recommend best practice in social care.

We therefore hosted three advisory groups on 15, 19 and 26 January, co-produced with members of SCIE’s Co-production Steering Group and the National Co-production Advisory Group (NCAG). The aim of these groups was to ensure our support offer to others around the Mental Health Act 2025 is credible, co-produced, and delivers practical, evidence-informed support; it is essential to be informed by the experiences and views of those who work in or who have a personal connection to this area of mental health care.

Those represented consisted of people working across the health, social care and voluntary sectors, as well as lived experience representatives.

Key findings

Embodying a person-centred approach, the advisory group sessions facilitated the opportunity for people to openly share their reactions, concerns and hopes around the Mental Health Act 2025. From these pivotal conversations, we heard how the changes are widely welcomed: with adequate funding, resources and support, the opportunity for effective community provision, greater autonomy for people who receive support, and reduced detentions would be a huge leap forward in terms of a modernised, recovery-focused model of care.

Equally, anxieties and concerns were raised about how the changes would be implemented, given a climate of financial challenges, workforce pressures, and the scale of the work required to develop alternative services that would meet the mark in terms of appropriate treatment pathways.

The desire for greater clarity around priorities and timescales was a recurring theme, with many feeling that a better sense of what is coming and when would enable them to steer the ship more steadily and mitigate unintended consequences for people who receive support.

Keeping up to date

We will be producing a more detailed report, outlining further key themes from the advisory groups,  in the coming weeks, which we will be using to design resources and products to most effectively support local authorities, NHS services, care providers, third sector, community providers and people who draw on care and support. One key point that was made abundantly clear by those who participated, is that having space to come together, share views and collaborate is welcome and needed as part of the change process, and the sooner conversations can start happening across the board, the better.

To ensure you receive the report and information about our resources as soon as available, please sign up to our mailing list and tick Care Act here.