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| TX: 06.10.08 - The Public Guardian PRESENTER: JOHN WAITE |
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| Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. WAITE Now around two million people in England and Wales lack the capacity to make decisions for themselves, they may have dementia perhaps, suffered brain damage in an accident or grown up with a severe learning disability. So they may be unable to manage their money or make decisions about medical treatment. A year ago the Mental Capacity Act came into effect which aims to ensure that the best interests of those who lack mental capacity are always put first by their carers and professionals. At the same time the post of Public Guardian was established to oversee the workings of the act and to safeguard the rights of people who can't make choices for themselves. Well tomorrow the Public Guardian - Martin John - will be launching a review of how the act is working - an act which has already drawn criticisms from leading charities. The act introduced something called the lasting power of attorney, the LPA, which relatives must obtain if they need to take over control of their loved ones finances, for example. But this has been taking up to six months to do when it was supposed to be completed in just over two. And so in the meantime many families have had to pay out thousands of pounds in some cases in care fees from their own income, a point I put earlier to the Public Guardian Martin John. JOHN We have had delays and that's actually a function of the success of the act. We had many, many more people applying for powers of attorney, lasting powers of attorney particularly, and it took us a while - it threw us initially - and took the organisation a while to gear up. And we have done that. And anybody that's applied since the middle of July for power of attorney their application has been managed through - within our sort of target time of nine weeks. And one thing I would like to stress is that even at best the processing of power of attorney it's not an overnight thing, there is a statutory six week period for notices and allowing for objections, so even with all of our administrative processes working fine, as they are now, you're still looking at a minimum of eight to nine weeks. WAITE But the other problem too that families have complained about is the amount of paperwork involved in obtaining an LPA, the forms, they say, are much longer, more complex than before. JOHN They are longer. We did actually do quite a bit of design work prior to the implementation of the act in October 2007 to build in the kind of protections into the lasting power of attorney to close down the areas of abuse. One of the criticisms of enduring powers of attorney, the previous system, was that they could be abused and there weren't strong enough controls. So that's the reason the forms have been longer. However, having said that, we recognise - we've seen the customer feedback and we've been doing work on the potential for forms redesign and that's one of the things that we expect to consult on quite early on in the review. WAITE And what about the cost too? The Alzheimer's Society told us it's concerned about the cost that families face in obtaining an LPA - an application costs £150 and of course there are sometimes solicitors' expenses on top of that. JOHN You're right the fee is £150. The fees is another area we're looking at in terms of consulting for the year ahead, for the financial year ahead ... WAITE If I can interrupt you - and if you make a mistake in filling that in and it's rejected and you have to apply a second time you have to pay another £150, I mean is that fair? JOHN Well there is - just let me return to my previous point. In terms of the forms and solicitors being involved one of the reasons the forms are longer than previously was so that individuals, if they wanted to, they could make a power of attorney themselves without having to use a solicitor. Now returning to your second point about the costs and second application fees - yes again we have experienced a lot of customers making mistakes in their powers of attorney, many of those mistakes invalidating the application. As a result of our experience and what we've seen we've worked very hard to build as much flexibility into our processes and our considerations of powers of attorney so that if there are errors on the original application that we can work with the individual to correct those, to avoid a second fee. So to give you an example, before Easter this year we were seeing something like 30% of applications which the errors were such that we were saying sorry this is invalid you have to make another application. Through our communications, through our changes in policy, we've been able to get that down to less than 10%. WAITE The act also expects doctors to call in independent mental capacity advocates - IMCAs, as they're called - in cases where someone without mental capacity doesn't have a loved one to look after their interests but another charity, this time MENCAP, says it's worried - the health service just isn't using these IMCAs enough. JOHN It is an area where we need to keep a close eye on that with Department of Health colleagues, the IMCA service is still new as well. And I think there's as much there about changing attitudes and cultures amongst healthcare professionals, care professionals, to recognise that the IMCAs - the independent mental capacity advocates - are there to help protect and support an individual who's lost capacity. So I think there's very much a cultural thing there. We have seen shifts and we've seen some improvements but that's again a part of what we want to look at through the review of the act and its implementation. WAITE Well you talk about culture - the Alzheimer's Society again says although the act has undoubtedly led to improvements in the way that people who lack mental capacity are involved in decision making it hasn't, in their view, brought about a fundamental change yet in culture in practise in dealing with the needs of people who lack mental capacity. JOHN I think we'd have to accept that but then cultural change is not an overnight thing, it's going to take time and it's going to take efforts through healthcare professionals, ourselves, the Department of Health, care trusts, homes. So the cultural change will come, I'm confident of that, but we have to recognise it's not going to be an overnight thing. WAITE Well tomorrow you're launching a review of the way the act is working, how can the public contribute to that? JOHN We expect the review to run between 12 and 18 months and we hope it will be a very open consultative review, we want to engage with stakeholders, with representative groups and get them working with us to really, as I said before, understand what's going on at ground level. WAITE Martin John, the Public Guardian. Back to the You and Yours homepage The BBC is not responsible for external websites |
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