Access to justice - help Mind lobby for change

Mind has heard numerous individual accounts of people's experience of bullying, harassment and exploitation in the community. Mind is equally concerned that people with experience of mental distress are failing to be adequately served by the criminal justice system and by other mechanisms for redress, including health service complaints procedures. These two issues, when seen together, amount to a serious threat to the dignity, rights and equal citizenship of people with mental distress in the community.

Mind conducted research over the summer, distributing questionnaires to both service users and staff involved in the delivery of advocacy and other related services in order to determine the extent of the problem and the common themes. Thank you to all those that filled in and returned the questionnaires detailing their experiences. These are valuable to our work and will be used to form the basis of our campaign.

We now need people who wish to be case studies for the campaign and media activity and are also able to talk in more detail about their experiences in accessing the systems of justice in England and Wales. We are also looking for examples of good practice within the system that anyone has come across.

If you would like to be a case study, or have information about good practice, please contact the Campaigns Team for more information.

Mind will be launching the campaign on 29 November 2007. Please check back to this website on this date for more information about the campaign and how you can get involved.