Services for Deputies

We can help you manage disputes and concerns about someone’s ability to:

There are a wide range of issues that may arise about a vulnerable person’s capacity to make important decisions for themselves. Decisions about care or accommodation arrangement that involve a deprivation of liberty present particular difficulties for deputies.

• Make decisions about their care needs
• Make decisions about their place of residence
• Make decisions about their contact with others
• Consent to sexual relations
• Enter into marriage
• Consent to serious medical treatment

Acting in someone’s best interests is your number one responsibility as their deputy. But deputies, families, local authorities, and care providers can sometimes disagree about a person’s best interests about:

• Their care needs, including arrangements amounting to a deprivation of liberty
• Their place of residence
• Their contact with others, including when there have been safeguarding issues
• Serious medical treatment, including proposed withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment and “do not attempt CPR” orders
• The need for a welfare deputy

We can help you navigate these disputes to fulfil your duty as a deputy. We challenge decisions which you think are against your client’s best interests, and defend you if someone challenges your own decisions.

You have various options for challenging local authorities’ or CCGs’ decisions about care funding, such as:

• Correspondence
• Formal complaints
• Ombudsman complaints
• Judicial review

The best approach will depend on the specifics of your case. Some disputes may involve a combination of methods, or an escalation if one method doesn’t succeed.

We can give you strategic advice on the best way to challenge a decision for your client and your chances of success.

Legal Aid may be available to those subject to a Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) authorisation without means-testing.

In other cases, it may be necessary to proceed on a privately funded basis. The Court of Protection has specific guidance about funding deputies’ costs and we’ll make sure that you stay compliant.