Scandal of putting mentally ill children in police cells must end, says MP

'It should be unthinkable for someone who's having an acute mental health crisis to be seen in a police cell,' says Dr Sarah Wollaston. Photograph: Stuart Clarke /Rex Features

Ministers should end the "scandal" of vulnerable children and young people suffering a mental health crisis being assessed in a police cell because of a nationwide shortage of proper psychiatric facilities, an influential MP has demanded.
Dr Sarah Wollaston, the chair of the Commons health select committee, said it was "wholly unacceptable" for under-18s who are picked up by the police because they are having a breakdown to be taken into cells rather than to a specialist medical unit.
"It would be unthinkable for someone who had a broken leg, for whom there was no place to assess them in casualty, to be taken to a police cell. It should be unthinkable for someone who's having an acute mental health crisis to be seen in a police cell. That's inexcusable, but it's happening," Wollaston told the Guardian. "That's wholly unacceptable for an adult, much less for a child."
Wollaston, who was a GP for 24 years before becoming Conservative MP for Totnes in 2010, added: "We won't have true parity of esteem [between mental and physical health in the NHS] unless we end the scandal of section 136 assessments".
Anyone detained under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983, which often happens if someone appears mentally disturbed in a public place, should be assessed in a "place of safety". That is meant to be a mental health unit, but a lack of them in many parts of England means one in three assessments takes place in a cell in a police station.