Researcher: National guidelines needed

National guidelines are needed on how prison in-reach teams for mental health should function, a UK-based researcher has said.

Professor Charlie Brooker from Lincoln University praised the teams for "finally [bringing] mental health care to prisons".

"For the first time prisoners with severe mental health problems get some support," he said.

However Professor Brooker warned that there are "no national guidelines for how in-reach teams should work, how they should be staffed and how much funding they need to achieve equivalence".

His comments follow research which found that mental health services in England's prisons receive only one-third of the money they need.

"Primary care trusts need to begin funding services based on need, not on historic levels of devolved central funding," Professor Brooker said.