Page 54 - Reduction of coercive measures

Chapter 3
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to advance a number of outlooks on the reporting of the use of coercive measures in the care for persons with intellectual disabilities. The following questions will be discussed: which forms of involuntary care should be externally reported and how is this external reporting influenced by environmental and other factors?
Design/methodology/approach
This paper describes an important part of the New Dutch Care and Coercion Act (in Dutch: Wet Zorg en Dwang) (Staatsblad, 2018,36) concerning reporting the use of coercive measures. The implications of reporting the use of coercive measures have been discussed at a meeting for experts in mental health law and the care of people with an intellectual disability. The issue has been presented to the participants as neutrally as possible, so as to provide the researchers a comprehensive picture of the different views on reporting the use of coercive measures. The outcome of this meeting has served as the input for a further step in the research – using the Delphi method – in order to address the issue comprehensively.
Findings
The Dutch legislation on reporting involuntary care implies that measures carried out only in the face of resistance should be externally reported. The experts that participated in this study endorse the importance of a real-time external reporting system. They believe that standardized and reliable external reporting requires involuntary care, the categories of involuntary care and the environmental and other factors that affect external reporting to be defined more concretely. They regard environmental and other factors as decisive for assessing whether a measure constitutes involuntary care. This in turn, therefore, has consequences for whether such incidents should be reported.
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