Our Mission is to raise awareness and confidence in the everyday application of the Mental Capacity Act, including the use of the Deprivation of Liberties and Liberty Protection Safeguards. We strive to demystify assessment process, empowering those involved and ultimately helping to ensure that people’s rights are protected, and the best decisions are made.
An RPR is a vital role under the Mental Capacity Act (2005), supporting an individual’s inclusion and rights around their Deprivation of Liberties (DoLS). This role is often filled by an unpaid family-member, friend or partner. However, if a family-member, friend, or partner cannot be identified, the supervisory body is required to refer for independent advocacy to complete this role as a paid (professional) RPR.
The Mental Capacity Act is designed to empower a person’s voice, protect their rights and provide safeguarding measures, alongside direction of practice, if a person is determined to lack capacity for a particular decision at a certain time. In this blog, we explore the role of the Mental Capacity Act around future decisions relating to healthcare, finance and assigning an LPA.
When does care become a deprivation for a young person under 18 years of age? When is care ‘necessary’ and how do we define what counts as ‘necessary’? Are a young person’s right so different from that of an adult? These are all questions that some of us wrestle with on an almost daily basis – and yet at the same time, it is evident that in some cases, these questions are not given the attention that they deserve.
This year has seen several quite significant updates in healthcare legislation, with several important changes for the way we treat and care for patients. While these are not all related to the Mental Capacity Act directly, it’s important that we take note of the changes and how they affect our day-to-day work.
On 8th July 2022 a set of nine draft forms related to the Liberty Protection Safeguards were released via email from the Department of Health and Social Care. These are not believed to be the mandatory format going forward, but rather are designed to help guide expectations and ensure consistency.
Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) is an important form of advanced decision making giving people the option to assign a trusted person (or persons) to make decisions on their behalf should they ever lack capacity in the future.
However, the role of LPA is not always well understood, and has often been misapplied or even in some cases neglected by some professional teams who may lack sufficient training.
Values are essential to help us establish a moral outlook and focus within our everyday practices – without which we lose our sense of identity and purpose.
Here at Mental Capacity Ltd, we have identified three core values to guide us in our mission: Promote, Partner and Protect.
In our last blog, we outlined some of the key differences between Next of Kin (NOK) and Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA). In this follow-up blog, we will explore a few recent examples of misuse of LPA, and lessons we can learn going forward.
In the tenth and final part of our blog series on the proposed changes to the MCA Code of Practice, we look at other legal tests of Mental Capacity, plus the use of Retrospective Assessments