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This resource aims to guide practitioners in assessing an individual's capacity to make decisions about their own lives, with a focus on vulnerable populations such as children and adults experiencing various challenges. It emphasizes understanding the impact of mental health, learning disabilities, and domestic abuse on capacity. By utilizing creative communication techniques and multi-agency collaboration, professionals can better support individuals in maintaining their autonomy and ensuring that their decisions are made in their best interests, as outlined by the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
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Assessing Capacity What is your responsibility ? How do you do it ? Carly Houghton Team Leader Deprivation of Liberty Team LCC Helen Pearson Board Officer Safeguarding Boards (LSCB/SAB)
Capacity to do what?! • Understand risk to a child • Understand a Protection Plan • Sustain change • Be fit for interview • Be criminally responsible • Make decisions about where you live • Understand that what is happening to them is harmful • Refuse services
What affects decision making? • Alcohol • Drugs • Learning Disability • Alzheimer's/Dementia • Mental Health diagnosis • Domestic Abuse (coercion) • Lack of empathy/egotism • Personality disorders • Cycles of abuse /Learnt behaviour
What ever the reason ! What is the impact ? • On a person’s ability to understand, retain and act on information • On a person’s ability to protect themselves and others • Look beyond a diagnosis and consider how thinking and behaviour impacts
What do these statements mean? • They lack capacity ! • They have a Learning Disability so don’t understand • They do not have a mental health diagnosis so there is nothing we can do • I can’t assess capacity because I know nothing about mental health.
We can all contribute • Expertise in a particular area of work- Mental Health, Learning Disability, Child Development, Drugs and Alcohol • Knowledge of the child or adult and their day to day experience – ‘What they wake up to’; Walking with them through the day • Creative communication techniques • Joint working
Not going into detail of Mental Capacity Act but use the principles as a guide to best practice how we might consider a persons capacity
Mental Capacity Act 2005 The key principles of the Mental Capacity Act are: • Every adult assumed to have capacity unless demonstrated otherwise • Person not to be treated as unable to make a decision simply because his or her decision is an unwise one • Person must be empowered as far as possible to help them reach capacity • Any act done for a person who lacks capacity must be done in that person’s “best interests” • Must consider if there is a less restrictive option
The test for capacity MCA s2 • A person lacks capacity if he is unable to make a decision because of an impairment of or a disturbance in function of the mind or brain • Impairment can be temporary • Lack of capacity cannot be determined either by a person’s age or appearance
Inability to make decisions MCA s3 • A person is “unable to make a decision for himself” if he is unable:- • To understand the information relevant to the decision • To retain that information • To use or weigh that information in the decision making process • Communicate his decision
Where we are now Is it understood ? How to stay there Capacity to Maintain Change To retain that information Accessible Information Testing out Understand information relevant to the decision Where we want to be Is it understood ? How to get there Is it understood ?
Asking the right questions • Break it down • Isolate decision • Is it understood • Test it out – • Evidence through observations actions
Building confidence in Capacity assessments • Use professional judgement • Ask for assistance/expertise • Think Whole Family • Adult workers think child • Children’s workers think adult • Multi Agency decision making
