Conditional discharge recall and s117 responsibility

The first question is whether the original aftercare duty ends when the conditionally discharged patient is recalled. If it does end then a second question is how to assess ordinary residence at the point of recall.

In relation to the first question, I think that the original duty does end on recall, for similar reasons as I gave in relation to CTO revocation in the CTO & s117 responsibility topic. Essentially, this is because the patient is “no longer a person who has ceased to be detained and has left hospital but rather a person who is detained and is in hospital” (Worcestershire, para 44).

In relation to the second question, the Court of Appeal in R (Wiltshire Council) v Hertfordshire CC [2014] EWCA Civ 712 decided that the patient was “still to be treated as ‘resident in the area’ of the same local authority as that in which he lived before the original hospital order was made”. But the Supreme Court in Worcestershire took a much harder line on what counts as non-voluntary when considering ordinary residence, and I think would probably have come to the opposite conclusion in a typical conditional discharge case.