Im still slightly confused, but this quote seems to imply that you do not actually have a POA with additional clauses, just the "regular" one, which you can use straight away.
You can get POAs which stipulate that they can only be used once capacity has been lost and I was always led to believe that, in this particular case, the additional clauses mean that you have to get independent verification that capacity has been lost. Im sure thats what the solicitor told me when OH and I did ours (we went for the "regular" ones). I would be interested to know whether this is, in fact, the case.
Hi thanks for your reply!
That's because we had been told by someone within the solicitors office (incorrectly) and someone at the MAS unit (again incorrectly), as well as the GP surgery that the 'clauses' in her LPAs required such a medical assessment, because they did not understand that the MCA allows us to make those judgements. But now that we've spoken to more professionals, it turns out they are the standard ones that anybody can select to have in place! They still require her to have lost capacity in order to override her decisions, but there's nothing additional in her LPAs to state she must be assessed by a medical professional and therefore under the MCA 2005 we as her family can make that assessment. It's just how we'd been poorly advised. Having spoken now to an independent metal capacity advisor, and Dementia UK, and the lead GP at her surgery, we now know that all of these people were incorrect and clearly don't understand how LPAs or capacity works themselves! Apparently this is common. And very unhelpful for carers and families. We are going to keep a log of how we came to decide whether she'd lost capacity on each decision we have to make on her behalf just incase it's contested, but it sounds as though you've been led to believe potentially wrongly too. It would be worth you checking I think! When I think about it now, this does make sense, as we were baffled as to how we could possibly obtain a medial capacity assessment every time a decision needed to be made. The doctor did also say though that for any major decisions she needs to make it is advised to have someone assess her capacity, but this is rare and for times when it would be more prudent to have someone independent decide i.e. with Will issues or life threatening operations. She has also now agreed to do this for us if we ever require it, finally. I hope this helps as judging by the mixed responses on this thread, lots of people could have been told different things!
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