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Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS); being a representative

chiarieds

Does anyone have any knowledge of this please?

We have a rental property & a lovely 87 year old tenant. She was recently hospitalised & my daughter & son-in-law, who live the nearest, have visited her twice as her son lives in Australia.

Understandably the nurses would not tell them much as they're not relatives, but my daughter could explain some of the confusion our tenant was facing, as she was talking about events that happened last January & the nurses said this has helped them better understand.

Our tenant was moved to what obviously seemed to be a dementia ward. My daughter managed to contact the son who said he'd been given very little information himself. So we're a bit in the dark as to what's happening, other than she may return home & get daily visits (unsure as to whom this will be), or she may need to go into care.

Out of the blue a social worker rang my daughter today & asked her to be a representative for her with this DoLS & told her to Google it! My daughter agreed (for now) as she felt put on the spot. My daughter has asked me to find out more & I hoped someone here will know what being a representative entails, thank you.

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Willwill

@chiarieds

DoLS :-- Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards

this link may help :-

https://www.scie.org.uk/mca/dols/at-a-glance

If standard authorisation is granted the following safeguards are available:

The person must be appointed a relevant person’s representative as soon as possible. Usually this will be a family member or friend who agrees to take this role.
If there is no one willing or able to take this role on an unpaid basis, the supervisory body must pay someone, such as an advocate, to do this.
The person and their representative can require the authorisation to be reviewed at any time, to see whether the criteria to deprive the person of their liberty are still met, and if so whether any conditions need to change.
The person and their relevant person's representative have a right to challenge the deprivation of liberty in the Court of Protection at any time.
If the person has an unpaid relevant person’s representative, both they and their representative are entitled to the support of an IMCA. It is good practice for supervisory bodies to arrange for an IMCA to explain their role directly to both when a new authorisation has been granted.
The home or hospital should do all it reasonably can to explain to a detained person and their family what their rights of appeal are and give support.

regards Will

chiarieds

Hi @Willwill ,Thank you Will, that was better information than I've found. Have discussed with my daughter & will obviously ask our tenant's son.

Such a difficult thing when our tenant has no family here. Our daughter wouldn't mind helping out on the one hand, but we're not being told much about her medical condition on the other.....& probably something a landlord wouldn't usually consider doing!

We are forwarding your link to her son, thank you again.

Adrian_Scope

Hello @chiarieds. I'm sorry we've not been able to help you more with this. I'm just wondering how things have progressed? Has your daughter managed to speak to the tenant's son?

chiarieds

Thank you, Adrian, yes she has. He's been phoning my daughter a couple of times a week.

Sadly it looks like our tenant may not get back home. She went into a residential assessment place yesterday, & will be there 6 weeks.

The DoLS forms took ages to get to my daughter, as they had been incorrectly addressed. He would have liked my daughter to sign them if she felt she could. The only good thing was the nurses started talking more freely about our tenant's medical condition to my daughter as they knew she had been approached about this.

My daughter had scanned the DoLS form to me, & it seems like a new one needs to be drawn up now for the new place our tenant is in. My daughter is probably hoping they don't ask her again!

Our tenant had asked my daughter to bring her mail in when she visited her on Sunday. Our tenant just opened her bank statement today, which showed £300 had been withdrawn at a cash point (whilst she had been on the dementia ward). This has obviously increased our tenant's distress.

So a social worker in this country is going to try & find out from the bank if there have been any more withdrawals, & the son also told my daughter he has been unsuccessfully trying to get through to our police from Australia. These latter 2 things have not yet not been mentioned to our tenant. It couldn't get much worse...

Only good thing is the son hopes to visit in January, after his Mum's been assessed, & our daughter can help with this as she's a travel agent.