Health and social care rights

Explains your rights to health and social care for your mental health. Includes information on eligibility for social care and how local authorities may meet your needs.

Useful contacts

Mind's services

Mind's Legal Line provides legal information and general advice by phone.
Local Minds offer face-to-face services across England and Wales. These services include talking therapies, peer support and advocacy.

How to find an advocate

To find advocacy services and groups in your area, you could call Mind's Legal Line on 0300 466 6463 or contact your local Mind.

If you're in hospital, you can also contact the:

Patient Advice Liaison Service (PALS) in England
Community Health Council in Wales

In some situations, you may be legally entitled to the support of an advocate. For more information, see our page on your legal rights to advocacy.

Other organisations

Carers Trust

carers.org
Information and support for people caring for someone else.

Carers UK

0808 808 7777
029 2081 1370 (Carers Wales)
[email protected]
carersuk.org
Advice and support for anyone who provides care.

Disability Tax Guide

disabilitytaxguide.org.uk
Guidance and support for anyone taking on a personal assistant to help them live independently.

GOV.UK

gov.uk
Lists government services and information.

Health in Wales

wales.nhs.uk
Information about health problems and treatments, including details of local NHS services in Wales.

Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman

lgo.org.uk
The final stage for complaints about councils and some other organisations providing local public services.

Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman

0345 015 4033
ombudsman.org.uk
Makes final decisions on complaints that have not been resolved by the NHS in England and UK government departments.

Public Services Ombudsman for Wales

0300 790 0203
ombudsman-wales.org.uk
Looks into complaints about public services and independent care providers in Wales.

Was this page useful? Yes No Tell us more Tell us more

Tell us more

Why did you visit this page? *

For my own mental health
For someone else’s mental health
Academic/educational/professional reason
Other reason

What do you want to tell us about?

Praise – things we do well
Criticism – things we could do better
Errors, mistakes or broken links

Please give us your feedback:

Note:

Please don’t include personal details like your name or email address. If you do, data protection law means we’ll have to delete your comments.
Unfortunately we can’t reply to this. If you want a response from us, see our Contact us page.
If you are in crisis right now and want to talk to someone urgently then you could call Samaritans on 116 123 (freephone). Our pages on crisis services have more options.

There has been a problem submitting your feedback.

Thankyou for providing your feedback.

This information was published in February 2023. We will revise it in 2026.

References are available on request. If you would like to reproduce any of this information, see our page on permissions and licensing.

Campaigning

Volunteering

Membership