Wirralson
Thanks for your response which accurately identifies the dilemma.Among the issues I'm talking about is:
Enabling decision-making,
providing the means to optimise communication
Placing the person at the centre of the decision-making
Acting in the person's best interests and according to their wishes
Providing an advocate
In the absence of all of the above:
issues concerning undue influence
and Deprivation of liberty whereby the person is removed from any of the above and is moved around according to the motivations of others.
Other legal concerns and other concerns.
I am being opaque.I do not feel very confident.
The above issues and others are the reason why I'm wondering can I rely on statutory regulatory bodies to make sure safeguards,protocols are in place top prevent abuse,or abuse having taken place with major impacts on the life of a vulnerable adult,my dad,can remedial action take place.
These are the regulating bodies I'm referring to whose remit is supposed to redress abuse.Again it is finding the right regulatory body because for some reason,genuinely,these bodies do not share information about more appropriate agencies to use.If they dont address abuse issues,why are they there?
As to using courts,Wirralson,Have you found out the cost of an hour of solicitor time?It would be a lot easier but the cost would be bonkers.
This bears out the cost of rights versus scrounging in the light of ineffectual public bodies,and the process of scavenging for human rights and redress of abuse.
Crumbs.
Abadam,
I have had to search in the archive forum under your name to find out what you were talking about. It might have been more helpful for you to have posted a link.
I am assuming the events involved refer to this thread?:
http://forum.alzheimers.org.uk/show...ings-engineering-move-of-father-with-dementia
I am well aware of the costs of solicitors. I am currently invovled in seeking legal advice personally, and also I have some involvement in it in my job. £200 per hour plus VAT is about the cheapest you'll get, and litigation is more expensive, topping £400 per hour plus VAT easily. Nevertheless only the Courts have the powers to make and enforce the kind of decisions involved here. Unfortunately, your posts in that thread reveal a certain amount of confusion on your part about who does what. You appear to have written to social services about a power of attorney, and some of your concerns seem to focus on alleged breaches of the power of attorney. It is clear that you are not the holder of the power of attorney (you state explicitly that it is held by a brother and sister). You have also stated that after 4 months you and your wife were unable to continue, and that at that point a social services assessment was undertaken.
It isn't entirely clear to me whether an assessment of your father's mental capacity (as laid down in the Mental Capacity Act 2005) was undertaken, but I think from your posts that it was, and must have been for the POA to be activated. That is a matter for the certificate provider. If you are challenging their competence in that, then you must litigate. Success is unlikely, simply because (a) certificate providers are usually medical or medico-legal and do (usually) know something about what they are supposed to be doing and (b) the courts take a pretty dim view of intra-familial rivalry.
PoA's for Health and Welfare (if there was one) don't actually permit decisions to be taken by the PoA holder on where individuals should live. These are (usually) informal.
But another issue is whether or not an assessment of was made your father's ability to continue to live (with arrangements) to continue in his own home. If there was an assessment (and there appears to have been) and the outcome of that assessment was that he could not continue to live on his own even with support, then his wishes become secondary to that fact. The fact that someone wth dementia (or anyone who lacks mental capacity) wishes a particular outcome is only one factor to be taken into consideration. The risks involved to the person, whether it is practically possible to implement them, how long such a solution will last before needing a further change are all factors that it would be reasonable for social services to take into account. And the PoA isn't relevant to the decision by Social Services for your father to reside with your brother, although it is relevant to the management of his property. The residence decision is a matter for statute law (AIUI the basis for such decisions is the general power to provide and promote for the welfare of persons with mental disorders (among other conditions) in Section 29 of the National Assistance Act 1948. It may also have involved (although you do not say so) a Guardianship order under section 7 of the Mental Health Act 1983. If your father is resident at your brother's home, deprivation of liberty may indeed be involved (the Supreme Court in England and Wales ruled in 2005 - the
Cheshire West case - that it is possible for deprivation of liberty to arise in a domestic setting). This would require a Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DOLS) assessment by Social Services, but challenging this would involve legal action.
In effect, what you are actually saying, is that a decision ended up be taken, and that you didn't like it. You have pinned this on your belief that your father's wishes were not ascertained or, if ascertained, were not acted upon. As I have pointed out above, the fact that a person with dementia expresses their wishes does not mean that those wishes automatically prevail over all other considerations in all circumstances. They may be taken into consideration, but overruled. My mother wished to die in her own home, but ended up being sectioned.
So what can you do? Well, your remedies are mainly in private law, not with agencies. Regulatory agencies or the LGO are not a substitute for the Courts, but are supplementary to them. They (generally) don't have enforcement powers of the type you seem to seek. What little you can do through them seems to me to be as follows.
As social services are involved, not the NHS, and as residential care is not involved, the CQC is irrelevant. From your posts it is hard to see any evidence of maladministration by social services, but if you have evidence of this (and what you have posted most emphatically is not evidence of maladministration) then your route is the Local Government Ombdusman (LGO) (at least in England - different provisions apply in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). To get there you ususally have to have exhausted the Local Authority's complaints procedure. It is not clear from your posts if you have done this. However, the LGO has no power to reverse decisions, but can only make recommendations. Based on my reading of what you have posted I doubt they would investigate, and even if they did, I am not convinced that you would get an outcome you would regard as favourable. But by all means try if you have not already done so.
There are two avenues in law. First you could in theory apply of a judicial review of the process leading up to the decision for your father to reside with your brother. I am not clear that you have
locus (the legal right to do this), and I cannot see any obvious grounds for doing so, although I'd expect the point about your father's wishes to be an issue. One problem with dementia is that those with the condition can be labile and suggestible, which means that it can be difficult to ascertain their true wishes, although the Mental Capacity Act and its Code of Practice oblige the relevant authorities (and others) to try. My mother could express the wish in the same sentence to return home, go back to her mother (dead for over half a century), go to get a flat with her sister, stay in the hospital/nursing home (depending on where she was at the time) or the golf club (which is where she sometimes thought she was).
Your father will, of course, be different. But even if it can be shown that leaving his own home was against his wishes, from your posts he now appears to be happy where he is. Provided the LA can show that it has carried out an appropriate process, the decision will probably - almost certainly - stand. If such evidence was provided, I think there is a fair chance that your solicitor would advise you at the disclosure of evidence stage not to continue, or even to refuse to do so (which, if he perceives or is advised by Counsel that there is no reasonable chance of success, he is ethically able to do).
The other issue appears to be your concerns over the Power of Attorney (presumably for property and welfare). Given the power of Local Authoriities to charge for services, your father's apparent inability to live in his own home, then it is clear he no longer requires it. PoA holders are required to act in the best interests of the person on whose behalf they hold PoA. If your father is unlikely to return to his home, then it is probably a liability in financial terms rather than an asset, and liquidating (selling) the asset is probably in his best (financial) interest. The PoA holder has to administer the assets for your father's benefit and provide reports to the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG). If you suspect wrongdoing, then by all means report it, but the act of selling the house is not, of itself, wrongdoing. They do not have the power to reverse a decision, but can ask the Court of Protection to remove or replace an attorney, as can you. Nothing you have written in the thread referred to suggest to me that there would be grounds for removing the present PoA holders. There may of course be such grounds that you have not revealed, but it would not ordinarily be appropriate to share these in open forum.
If you have more general concerns about your father's welfare, then you can raise a safeguarding concern with the Local Authority. There is insufficient evidence in your posts to make any comment on the viability of this as a course of action.
Finally you seem convinced that your siblings are "controlling" your father. I wonder how they see you? You state explicitly in the thread that there was inter-sibling aggression and are honest enough to admit that some of that was yours. This comes accross very strongly in the posts and correspondence you quote, and if I can see it, so will the people to whom you were writing. If you wish to take things further you will need greater insight and self-criticism and a calmer tone. One of the keys to success in this situation is to accept the possibility that you may not be right on every point. You also seem to have little understanding of the legal processes that were actually going on, the roles of agencies and the law. Jaycee 23 put it very gently to you that you needed to be calmer. I'd endorse that here.
W