Missing: Whose decision? Consent, capacity and confidentiality for missing adults with mental health problems Francesca Diamond Third Qualitative Research on Mental Health Conference 2010

Missing People Three confidential help lines for those missing and their families 114,000 calls received in the year Payne’s definition of a missing person “a social situation in which a person is absent from their accustomed network of social and personal relationships to the extent that people within that network define the absence as interfering with the performance by that person of expected social responsibilities, leading to a situation in which members of the network feel obliged to search for the missing person and may institute official procedures to identify the person as missing” (Payne, 1995: 335).

What does missing mean to you?

What do we know about adults who go missing? (Biehal, Mitchell and Wade 2003)

Westminster information sharing

Information sharing continued

Guiding principle of the protocol Increasing knowledge about service users allows for more effective service provision –Historical records –Benefit to individual and wider community –Eliminating risk Concerns for confidentiality –Right to remain missing

Who decides when to share information? The benefits of ‘finding’ Capacity and consent to share information Access to services and treatment

Taking forward a shared protocol Choice Service User consultations Supporting above finding Need for further research