MH-SIP – Reducing Restrictive Practice (RRP)

168 inpatient mental health wards across England are currently working to reduce restrictive practice, covering 90% of NHS Mental Health Trusts and a number of private providers.

How this work began

In 2018, the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH) supported 38 inpatient mental health wards across England to reduce their use of restrictive practice using a quality improvement approach. Find out more about the 18-month pilot collaborative.

In 2021, NHS England commissioned the scale up and spread of the reducing restrictive practice (RRP) pilot as part of the Mental Health Safety Improvement Programme (MH-SIP). The scale up aims to take the learning from the pilot, including the main areas pilot teams focused on to reduce restrictive practices and ideas tested, to assist teams as they start working on their own projects as part of the scale up.

The scale up and spread is delivered by Patient Safety Collaboratives (PSCs), part of regional Health Innovation Networks (HINs), formally known as Academic Health Sciences Networks (AHSNs) and supported by the NCCMH team who worked on the original pilot. See information on the PSCs and HINs on NHS England's website.

In addition to coaching support, the Patient Safety Collaboratives have a number of opportunities to share their learning and challenges, such as events and speciality networks, more details on which can be found below.