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iii) Police/CJS challenge 3: Clients with moderate/severe LD potentially lacked capacity e.g. for speaking to police and to give consent to FMEs.
Services/agencies’ views about the capacity of people with moderate/severe LD to talk to the police sometimes clashed with what the client wanted. In these cases, the LD ISVA worked with LD services to find out what support was already in place for the client and what decisions they had already made and why.
Where appropriate, the ISVA persevered to ensure that the client’s capacity was properly assessed and recognised, and that their wishes and best interests were central to any decisions made.
LD ISVA: You’ve got people assessing capacity saying they
don’t have capacity to decide if they want to talk to the police when the client is telling you day in day out that they do want to go to the police...A big challenge has been trying to balance that, trying to keep at the heart of it what SafeLink is about: making sure that person’s choices are at the centre.
I’ve learnt to persevere if I feel convinced on someone’s choice--if they’re telling me their choice consistently, if they’re explaining what they think the outcomes might be, they’re accurate. That shows that they’ve understood it.
The below case illustrates how the ISVA supported clients in such situations.
Case example: FME when client potentially lacks capacity
In ‘Harriet’s case, the SARC would not carry out an FME, because there were doubts over her capacity to consent.
The LD ISVA requested that adult social care do a capacity assessment. She then liaised with the LD nurse around the best way to go about this process. To inform their capacity assessment, they felt the client needed pictorial information on the FME process and a familiarisation visit to the SARC where the FMEs take place. The LD ISVA developed pictorial information with SafeLink’s steering group, the SARC, and the LD team.
The LD ISVA also arranged familiarisation visits to the SARC and a follow up meeting to check understanding. Before this, the LD ISVA arranged two visits to ensure Harriet remembered who she was and what her role was.
The LD ISVA also worked with Harriet’s speech and language therapist to produce some picture cards to use with Nextlink DVA agency, to talk about safety at home.
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