These are notes for the basis of a discussion with parents around how their young person’s ability to make their own decisions can affect how a parent can support or manage the young person’s financial affairs.
This document gives an overview of what a Deprivation of Liberty Safeguard (DoLS) is and when it might be used. A DoLS can only be used where the young person is subject to high levels of care and supervision but does not have capacity to consent to those arrangements – usually in residential care or hospital.
When a person is deemed not to have the mental capacity to make a decision any decision taken must be in their best interests and this is a term given meaning in the Mental Capacity Act. The information in this document comes from a training course available on an NHS training website.
A mental capacity assessment doesn’t have to be formal or recorded in formal way, especially for day to day decisions. However, your young person may have an assessment carried out in a more formal way with the results recorded more formally and it can be helpful to see what that might look like.
A guide from Mencap about using the Mental Capacity Act and how it affects parents and disabled young people. It is written with disabled people with more complex and profound needs in mind.
This link is to a document about promoting less restrictive practice – ensuring that the cared for person is as free as they can be. It is aimed at professionals but the examples given in extensive tables of direct and indirect restrictions along with suggestions of what could change are, I think, helpful to us all.
Understanding the mental capacity act and how it applies to decisions made by or for our young people is essential. This document comprises the notes used by Bright Futures to deliver a workshop to parents.
This is a document about mental capacity assessments and the guiding principles to help you understand how the Mental Capacity Act might affect your young person and their decision making.