Liberty Protection Scheme

Despite the pressure of Brexit, the Government are making space to legislate for a replacement for the Deprivation of Liberty safeguards.  This has been a fated area of law since 1997 when the Bournewood case highlighted a gap in the law. A 49 year old man with autism became distressed at a day centre and was informally admitted to a psychiatric unit. He was not subject to a mental health section and lacked the capacity to consent to his residence in the unit. It was clear in 1997 that this was unlawful as the patient had no right of appeal or protection of his rights.

For some years, there was consideration of the use of mental health sections, but the Deprivation of Liberty safeguards were introduced as an amendment to the Mental Capacity Act. At the time of introduction, it felt as though as much was done as possible to minimise the number of people subject to such safeguards but there was some protection of rights in the bureaucratic process. Then Lady Justice Hale blew the situation out of the water in March 2014 by a judgement which simplified the process - is the person lacking capacity, under continuous supervision and not free to leave? Then that is a Deprivation of Liberty and needs the safeguards. Lady Justice Hale said that this vulnerable group need the highest level of protection. Unfortunately, local authorities were not resourced to deal with the massive increase - applications going from 13,000 a year to 217,325 in 2016-7. The situation could not stay as it was and the Law Commission made some recommendations.

The proposed Liberty Protection Scheme is a watered down version of the original proposals. One of the more concerning areas is the new scheme puts a lot of onus on care home managers to make decisions and arrange assessments. We know some care home providers are outstanding and will uphold rights but others will be daunted and unable to respond to this well. The bill also doesn't include the proposal to provide opportunity for legal action against care providers for unlawful deprivations of liberty. The bill's proposals offer less protection to this highly vulnerable group and seems to be an uneasy compromise.

Wood review of local safeguarding children boards

There has been a fair bit of publicity about the Children and Social Work Act 2017 with the changes to the professional journey of child care social workers. There has been far less comment about the implementation of the Wood review on Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) and Serious Case Review (SCRs).  There will be no legal requirement to have a LSCB but there will be a requirement instead for safeguarding partners to work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. The partners are the local authority, Clinical Commissioning Group and the Police. 

SCRs as we now know them will cease. There will be about 20 cases of national importance reviewed by a central body - the Child Safeguarding Review Panel. All the other cases will be subject to local child safe practice reviews. These are meant to be low key and the reports will go to the central body. It will be interesting to see whether this does end up being less bureaucratic and repetitious. 

The Victoria Climbié Enquiry

Today's Radio 4 programme The Reunion focussed on the Victoria Climbie Enquiry. It was good to be reminded 17 years later of the harrowing story of this child's 10 months in London that led to her death. As Lord Laming said, "there were failures at every level of every organisation".  Most of the discussion on the programme was thoughtful and helpful. However, as usual the discussion focused towards the end on making sure this doesn't happen again and there was passing reference to Peter Connolly. The Panel were asked if social work is better now at protecting children. There was a naive optimism in the Panel. Laming talked about meeting some inspirational social workers.

Although I agree on that point, the day after local government elections and heading towards a likely Tory victory in June, it is clear that many of the aspects that allowed agencies to fail Victoria are worse than ever. Social workers are amazing but are working under immense pressure with decreasing resources. Schools are left with monitoring families who 17 years ago would have been allocated to social workers. Bureaucracy and form filling takes even more social work time. With more rounds of local government cuts ahead, addressing child protection effectively will take more than inspirational social workers.

Child Protection - Information Sharing Project (CP-IS)

CP-IS is a new data sharing system that is being piloted in certain areas. The idea of it is that it will provide very brief information for unscheduled medical appointments e.g. A&E, walk-in centres, out of hours GPs, paediatric wards, maternity units and ambulance services. The information shared is only for children on a CP plan or look after children.

This is a good development but it is still extraordinary how little data is available if a child crosses local authority boundaries. Of course safeguarding adults is even more woolly and there is no CP-IS equivalent for adults.

Deprivation of liberty safeguards delayed

The proposed legal changes to the deprivation of liberty (DOL) safeguards have been put off until at least March. In the context of Brexit, the Government clearly don't see this as a priority. With the incredible pressure on adult social care at the moment, the streamlining of DOLs does seem like a big priority for local authorities.

Also, we have yet another version of the Care Act Statutory guidance to get to grips with - it is a shame it is such unhelpful and unclear guidance compared with Working Together to Safeguard Children from harm.

Local Authority funding

The care system is in crisis because of cuts to local authority (LA) budgets accompanied by increasing costs of employing staff. Even the best care homes are struggling with this and have to charge considerably more than LA's can pay to make any profit. This means we have a residual poorly funded system for those who have to rely on LA funding.

There are homes and domiciliary providers that no social worker would wish to place their relative in but they have no choice because of the agreed funding limits. Until we sort out social care, the NHS will struggle as older people have more admissions with accidents and dehydration and then stay in hospital longer because services aren't there for them on discharge.