CQC - DOLS reports

2009-2010

  • CQC, 'The operation of the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards in England 2009/10' (March 2011). The 'Issues Raised' are listed as: (1) the DH should consider developing clear, concise and practical briefings on what may constitute a 'deprivation of liberty' and when the Safeguards should be used; (2) staff should be trained effectively on the types of practice that may lead to deprivation of liberty, and should seek advice from their supervisory body in cases of doubt; (3) the move to regulation under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 will allow a monitoring role which is consistent across health and adult social care; (4) the DH should consider reducing the amount of paperwork required.

2010-2011

2011-2012

2012-2013

  • CQC, 'Monitoring the use of the Mental Capacity Act Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards in 2012/13' (January 2014)†. The following are the chapter headings and key points from each chapter. (1) Patterns of use of the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards. (a) Use of the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards overall did not increase greatly during 2012/13, but there were still unexplained regional differences in their use. (b) There has been a significant increase in applications for the use of the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards to protect the rights of older people deprived of their liberty in their best interests. In contrast, there has been a slight fall in the applications relating to people aged 18 to 64. (2) Monitoring the use of the DOLS through inspection of care homes and hospitals. (a) To carry out our fundamental responsibility to protect and promote the rights of people who use health and social care, it is essential that we monitor how well care homes and hospitals understand when and how to use the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards. (b) As in previous years, a majority of care homes and hospitals fail to comply with their statutory requirement to notify us of applications to use the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards, and their outcomes. This makes it harder for our inspectors to identify people subject to application or authorisation for inclusion in pathway tracking. (c) We expect hospitals and care homes to notify all outcomes of Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards applications to CQC. (d) We remind all care homes and hospitals of the requirement to work with people who may lack capacity to consent within the framework of the MCA, and in particular to make every effort to minimise restraint and restrictions on liberty. (e) We are working to improve the knowledge and confidence of our staff with regard to the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards and the wider MCA. (3) Monitoring of supervisory bodies. (a) We are pleased to have strengthened our collaborative relationship with supervisory bodies, and hope to build on this to improve our shared understanding of the operation of the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards. (b) There appears a wide range of practice with regard to extending urgent authorisations. We encourage local authorities to ensure that this practice is kept to a minimum. (c) Very few of the reviews that happen are undertaken at the request of people subject to an authorisation or their representatives. We encourage local authorities and IMCAs to support these people to request reviews where appropriate. (4) Better understanding of the experience of people who have been the subject of authorisation applications. (a) We are very grateful to the IMCAs who helped us this year by completing our survey on the experiences of people personally affected by the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards. We plan to build on this next year, by interviewing people identified by local authorities or IMCAs as agreeing to talk to us. (b) The IMCA survey provided some important and useful insights into the experience of people who may be subject to the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards and their representatives. It paints a mixed picture of people’s experience, with some evidence of good practice but also evidence of people still not always being listened to or involved in important decisions about their lives or the lives of a relative or close friend. (c) There appears to be variation in practice among IMCAs in how actively they encourage people subject to authorisation and their representatives to ask for reviews or to challenge the authorisation to the Court of Protection. We encourage IMCAs to share knowledge of how and when to do this, and IMCA organisations to support their staff to gain the knowledge and confidence to help people affected by the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards to challenge the status quo.

2013-2014

2014-2015

INFORMATION




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