nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

We want to hear from you: please tell us about your experience of the online community.

POA question

lindor

Hi. My cousin has currently POA for my elderly uncle . (Scotland). Approximately nine months ago my uncle requested to add me as a second POA. There is apparently a backlog and this has not been signed off yet by the public guardians office although everything was sent off at the time. My uncle now has dementia and my cousin is attempting to put him in a care home against his wishes. Is this a case I could use to have my uncles POA wishes for me expedited in order to look after his interests.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Kimi87

A POA means you have to act in the person's best interests.

Even though it's against his wishes, it still may be in his best interests to go into a care home.

Albus_Alumni

Hey there @lindor and a warm welcome to the community.

I can see you're already receiving some top support and I don't want to get in the way. I just wanted to say hi. 😁 I hope you can get this situation remedied for your uncle quickly.

forgoodnesssake

I would definitely contact the Scottish Office of Public Guardian asap. However I have to agree that, unfortunately, your uncle may not now be in a position to make suitable decisions for himself and so his unwillingness to move into a home MAY have to be over-ruled. Very difficult and sensitive situation though.

It can be very unclear, in Scotland anyway, at what point the welfare POA can be used. My father's LPA document gives my brother and I both finance and welfare powers and I have been using the finance part for about 10 year now as he gets increasingly affected by a dementia type condition.

However the welfare bit was much harder to ascertain when it could be used as there was, amazingly, no definition of who could "sign it off"!

It is worded very vaguely as "in the event of my being incapable in terms of the Act to decisions (sic) about my personal welfare, or in the event that my attorney reasonably believes that that is the case, then my attorney may make decisions on my behalf in relation to my personal welfare. I have considered how my incapacity will be determined" but then there is nothing at all about how it will be determined or by whom!

I queried this with 2 different (Scottish) solicitors a couple of years ago as it seemed incredible to me and they confirmed that whilst it would be better to have some concrete criteria or process specified, it was quite common not to! In the end my dad was quite co-operative, luckily but it took ages for social workers to accept that he did not have the capacity to make decisions and that much of what he told them was invented or at least concocted from what he thought might have happened. GP was not much use until a new one came onboard and eventually put in writing that he did not have capacity but even the the care home he had to move into a couple of years ago needed written "proof" that I could act as attorney and had to ask the GP attached to the care home to write something again.

(The POA was done by a solicitor and had quite a few mistakes that we needed to correct and even now it's grammar and spelling leaves a lot to be desired but my dad went ahead and did it rather than doing it online and paying a lot less!)