The Mental Capacity Act is based upon 5 fundamental principles. They ensure that people’s rights aren’t interfered with unnecessarily whist providing the best interests and less restrictive principles for when decisions have to be made by other people.
When assessing a person’s mental capacity to make a specific decision, there are 3 questions that need to be asked: Is there an impairment or disturbance in the functioning of the person’s mind or brain? Is the person unable to make the decision? Is the person’s inability to make the decision because of the impairment […]
This week saw the Mental Capacity Act (Amendment) Bill (the Bill that will introduce the Liberty Protection Safeguards) move to Committee Stage in the House of Lords and on 5th September around 5 hours of discussions were held. The discussions concerned just a few (of the many) amendments that the Lords would like to see […]
In a previous post, I introduced the Mental Capacity Act and the fact that some people can’t make some decisions for themselves. In such cases, the Mental Capacity Act and other case law provide frameworks and tests used to assess whether a person has the Mental Capacity to make a particular decision. The Mental Capacity […]
Mental capacity is the ability to make decisions. Sometimes decisions are relatively simple and made on a daily basis such as what to wear, what to eat and what to do that day. Other times, decisions are more complex, made less often and might have legal implications such as agreeing to medical treatment, making a […]
Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards Yesterday the Law Commission published their Mental Capacity and Deprivation of Liberty Interim Statement. It follows their consultation paper published in July 2015 which set out a complete overhaul of the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) and proposed a new ‘Protective Care’ scheme that was wider in scope than the current […]