25 people attended our information-packed Understanding Deputyship workshop on 21 September. The event in Harrow was organised jointly by Engagement ConneX and Advocacy 1st.
After a complementary light lunch, one of Engagement ConneX’s Coordinators, Sandy Bowman, introduced the workshop and handed over to Abe Ncube, Advocacy 1st’s deputyship expert.
The workshop covered key areas that carers need to know about if they seeking to make decisions on behalf of the person they care for. Among the issues discussed, Abe included an overview of deputyship and explained Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA), Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS).
Deputyship enables a carer to make decisions on behalf of the person they care for when the cared-for person lacks capacity to do so themselves. A deputy must act in the best interests of the person they care for and not take advantage of them. LPA is created while the cared-for person still has capacity to make decisions for themselves.
Deputies can be family members or friends, but they must be at least 18 years old and approved as suitable by the Court of Protection (COP). Before the pandemic, the COP application process took 4–6 months.
DoLS is the procedure prescribed in law when it is necessary to deprive a person of their liberty. Depriving a person of their liberty is a very serious matter; therefore, DoLS is only applied in cases where a vulnerable person lacks capacity to consent to care and treatment that will keep them safe from harm.
The carers who attended the workshop commented that the information they were given was very useful. You can access the main points of Abe’s presentation here, which also covers the issues below.