- Saturday, May 11, 2024
By: Swati Rana
MEDACT has asked for the ‘Vulnerability Support Hubs’ a mental health project run by counterterrorism police to be scrapped as it raises ethical concerns.
According to the report by Medact, thousands of people – including teenagers and children as young as six – have been assessed at Vulnerability Support Hubs, which are part of the government’s anti-extremism Prevent programme.
Medact has made a series of Freedom of Information requests into what it calls the “secretive” practice, saying that patients referred to the programme are being monitored by health professionals and coerced.
Its report shows how the hubs blur the boundaries between security and care.
The report has revealed that Muslims are 23 times more likely to be referred to the hubs for “Islamism” than white British people for “far right” extremism.
Some mental health assessments are being conducted in the presence of police, which a report by Medact alleges is “potentially coercive” and is blurring the lines between mental healthcare and counterterrorism.
Information is also being used to pursue convictions and there is evidence of police applying pressure on health professionals, leading to some patients being detained under the Mental Health Act, the report claims.
In some cases, health professionals are being encouraged to monitor patients to ensure they are taking their medications based on concerns such as “acting in an odd manner” or being a “convert to Islam”.
Dr Hil Aked, one of the co-authors of the report and the research manager at Medact, said: “This project claims to be about care, but it’s actually about helping police circumvent confidentiality, while co-opting health workers into activities beyond their remit, including surveillance and criminalisation.”
He said police had “tried to keep the project secret because it’s so ethically dubious”, adding there had been a “complete lack of independent evaluation”.
People are referred to the scheme based on suspicion, rather than for committing any crime.
Most of those assessed at the hubs are people who have been referred to prevent and are suspected to have mental health conditions.
Counterterrorism policing’s often spurious and highly racialised pre-crime security concerns may be improperly influencing medical treatment and implicating health workers in criminalisation, the report said.
Based on the documents obtained through a series of long-running Freedom of Information requests, the report revealed that hubs use a ‘consultancy’ model which appears to allow police to circumvent normal confidentiality expectations.
It uses sub-diagnostic thresholds and risk pathologising people based on political expression or socioeconomic vulnerability. The project has partly been funded with NHS money, yet police strenuously resisted disclosure of any information about the scheme.
Despite a lack of independent evaluation and public scrutiny, the scheme is currently being rolled out nationwide by the police via ‘Project Cicero’. The scheme risks worsening mistrust and further deterring racialised groups from accessing healthcare when in need, the report said.
