Children detained under the Mental Health Act

Data-sharing agreement from NHS England Data Uses Register. Evidence status: source reported.

Organisation

CHILDREN'S COMMISSIONER'S OFFICE

Published

2026-10-08

Source reference

DARS-NIC-808477-T8P0S-v1.2

Jurisdiction

England

Licence

Open Government Licence v3.0, subject to NHS England terms and exclusions

The Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England (‘Children’s Commissioner’s Office’) requires data concerning children detained under the Mental Health Act. The Children’s Commissioner’s role is to promote and protect the rights of children. She has a particular duty towards those children with a social worker, in care, or living away from home – including those in mental health inpatient settings. In undertaking this data collection, the Children’s Commissioner is seeking to understand the children who are most affected by inpatient stays and detentions, how many children are affecte…

Register reference

DARS-NIC-808477-T8P0S-v1.2

Applicant type

Public Corporation

Data controllers

CHILDREN'S COMMISSIONER'S OFFICE

Agreement period

2026-10-08 to 2029-10-07

For commercial purposes (as marked in the register)

No

Release files listed by NHS England

1

Data approved

• Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS)
• Hospital Episode Statistics Admitted Patient Care (HES APC)
• Mental Health Services Data Set (MHSDS)

Objective, as published

The Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England (‘Children’s Commissioner’s Office’) requires data concerning children detained under the Mental Health Act. The Children’s Commissioner’s role is to promote and protect the rights of children. She has a particular duty towards those children with a social worker, in care, or living away from home – including those in mental health inpatient settings. In undertaking this data collection, the Children’s Commissioner is seeking to understand the children who are most affected by inpatient stays and detentions, how many children are affected and the nature of their stays. The data request is made under the power conferred on the Children’s Commissioner in Section 2F of the Children Act 2004 (as inserted by Section 110 of the Children and Families Act 2014): (1) Any person exercising functions of a public nature must supply the Children’s Commissioner with such information in that person’s possession relating to those functions as the Commissioner may reasonably request for the purposes of the primary function or the function under section 2D. (2) The information must be information which that person would, apart from subsection (1), lawfully be able to disclose to the Commissioner. The Children’s Commissioner requires the following information: 1. How many children were detained under the Mental Health Act in hospital wards each of the following financial years: 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22, 2022-23, 2023-24, 2024-25, 2025-26,…

Expected benefits, as published

The information is required to support the Children’s Commissioner’s statutory remit to promote awareness of the views and interests of all children in England. The findings will be used to inform policy makers around health and social care, ensuring policy for children detained under the MHA and inpatient in mental health wards is evidence based.

Benefits reported by the applicant

-

This is the applicant's own account; OpenHDI has not verified it.

Source: https://digital.nhs.uk/services/data-access-request-service-dars/data-uses-register. Captured 2026-11-05.

Limitations: Data-sharing agreement as published in NHS England's Data Uses Register. An agreement permits access; actual data releases are listed separately. Expected and yielded benefits are as reported by the applicant and have not been independently verified. Long text fields can be cut off in NHS England's spreadsheet export at Excel's 32,767-character cell limit.