Accessible summary• The Mental Capacity Act says that everyone has a right to make choices in their life. • Some people find it hard to make a decision when it involves complex information. • People who work in services can be unsure how to decide when people can make a hard decision. • We developed a way of deciding if a person with a Learning Disability is able to make a choice (has capacity). • We tried to make the process clear so that more people can use it.
SummaryThere appears to be some degree of hesitation and lack of confidence among professionals in conducting capacity assessments. This document explains a twophase process developed and implemented by a multi-disciplinary group of professionals during a pilot project. The first phase in the decision making process is to determine to what extent the person being assessed is able to process and recall information. The second phase involves understanding more detailed information specifically relating to the decision, in this case the procedure or intervention. The use of a two-phase process is illustrated via case studies. Over a 2-year period, 17 people who were referred from the eye unit to the capacity team were seen. Of those, two progressed to phase two of the process -and one person demonstrated capacity to make a decision. The process was based on a functional approach, and was used to avoid making decisions based on status approaches. The developed process was fed back to the professionals in the eye unit to enable them to assess capacity in relation to eye surgery. We hope to have demonstrated that capacity assessment skills are inherent in all practitioners working with people with a learning disability and are not the privileged possession of only particular professionals.
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