Guidance
Assessing and managing risk in mental health services
How mental health practitioners can manage risk including self-harm and harm to others.
Documents
Details
Organisations, care teams and individual practitioners should review their current practice against the principles in this guidance and consider ways of applying them in daily practice.
This guide provides a list of tools that can be used to explain how they can improve their practice by including one or more of them in their risk assessment and management processes. It balances care needs against risk needs with emphasis on:
- positive risk management
- collaboration with the service user and others involved in care
- the importance of recognising and building on the service user’s strengths
- the organisation’s role in risk management alongside the individual practitioner’s role
Published 31 March 2009