Council breaches legal time scales for completion of Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards cases

Rochdale Council

Rochdale Council is frequently breaching the legal time scales for completion of Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (Dols) cases.

Under the Dols, local authorities must assess whether people who lack capacity to consent to their care arrangements are being deprived of their liberty in care homes or hospitals and, if so, whether this is in their best interests and necessary to protect them from harm. The Dols are designed to provide independent scrutiny, by social workers and health professionals, of these care arrangements.

A landmark Supreme Court ruling in March triggered a nine-fold rise in monthly referrals to councils.

In the borough of Rochdale 53 applications were received in the year 1 April 2013 to 30 March 2014, all of which were assessed within statutory time scales.

However, between 1 April and 30 September this year, 221 received applications were received; only 116 have been carried out, of which just 36 were determined within statutory time scales.

A scathing House of Lords committee report, published just days before the Supreme Court ruling, also warned that legal safeguards were being ignored.

Peers concluded that tens of thousands of elderly and disabled people are being locked up or forcibly medicated without proper legal process.

The ruling led to a surge of applications to local authorities for DoLS orders as care homes and hospitals moved to ensure they were complying with the law – and revealing the true scale of restraint in England in the process.

Steve Blezard, Assistant Director of Adult Care at Rochdale Council, said: “New rules which came in earlier this year significantly lowered the threshold by which somebody is deemed to be deprived of their liberty and this has led to a surge of referrals to local authorities. As a result of this, Rochdale, alongside councils across the country, has not been able to process all of these within statutory time scales. Rochdale Council is working hard to address this. A sum of money has been allocated to pay for a number of employees to be trained as best interest assessors and extra staff have been brought in to help clear the backlog as quickly as possible.”