Report on the Review of the Mental Health (Scotland) Act 1984

Acknowledgements

In conducting this review, we faced a complex and difficult task, within a limited time period. The task was made considerably easier by the contributions of a number of people, to whom we would wish to express our gratitude.

Dr Allyson McCollam and her colleagues at the Scottish Development Centre for Mental Health Services greatly assisted us in carrying out analyses of the responses to our first and second Consultation papers, and in organising consultative events for users and informal carers.

ENABLE, Children in Scotland and Alzheimer Scotland - Action on Dementia organised the three very useful special events which focused on learning disability, children and dementia.

FAIR provided invaluable help and advice in drafting our consultation leaflet for people with learning disabilities, and Dr Kirsten Stalker carried out a thorough analysis of responses.

We conducted an extensive visiting programme, and we are grateful to all those who assisted in the organisation of these visits. Everywhere we went, we were made to feel welcome, and the visits provided us with a most valuable source of information and ideas.

We would also wish to express our thanks to all who responded to our consultation documents, attended consultative events, or gave oral evidence. We were impressed by the time and trouble people took in contributing their views, which were of tremendous assistance to us in reaching our own conclusions.

Finally we would wish to express our thanks to our Secretariat. We were appointed in February 1999 and the MacLean Committee on Serious Violent and Sexual Offenders a month later. The Secretariat served both our committee and the MacLean Committee until that committee reported in June 2000. The workload was therefore particularly strenuous and we were very fortunate that despite that, the demands we put on the Secretariat were invariably met timeously and with work of a very high standard. Our sincere thanks therefore go to Alison Bell, Gavin Russell, Bette Francis and Luke McGarty as well as administrative staff who helped from time to time. A special word of thanks is, however, due to Colin McKay who had the capacity to turn out, often at short notice, an impressive number of well informed and thoughtful contributions to our work, which considerably lightened our task.

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