In addition to setting and upholding the professional standards for all social workers in England, we approve training for certain advanced roles, and include these roles as annotations on our register. One of these areas is mental health, and we are now consulting on a new set of standards we will use to approve courses leading to the specialist award of approved mental health professional (AMHP).

An AMHP is a qualified professional who has completed specialist mental health training. As a result, they are eligible to be approved by a local authority to carry out certain duties under the Mental Health Act 1983 and associated Regulations. This means that they are responsible for coordinating the assessment and admission to hospital of a person who is being detained (‘sectioned’) under the Act.

AMHPs are essential to helping people get the right treatment at a critical and often very distressing time, and their decisions can have a huge impact on a person’s wellbeing. The specialist training they receive must equip them for this responsibility.

The standards that we are consulting on, like the standards that apply to qualifying social work education and training, set out our expectations for what courses need to do to be sure that those who qualify from them can practise as safe and effective AMHPs.

As well as approving new courses, we will also reapprove courses periodically to make sure that they continue to meet the standards. This is one of the ways in which we work on behalf of the public to set minimum standards, assure courses against them and support the effective training of professionals in advanced and high-risk roles.

This event will give you the opportunity to respond to the proposed standards which can be found on our website.

Please note that these standards do not apply to individual AMHPs. These standards are for the providers of AMHP training courses.

We are also holding consultation events for our approved mental capacity professional (AMCP) consultation.

The session will be held on Microsoft Teams and the link will be sent out Eventbrite 2 hours before the session starts