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SCIE supported decision-making film

The often neglected principle of not treating a person as incapable of making a decision unless all practicable steps have been tried to help them is the focus of a short film that has been published on the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) website. In it, Lorraine Currie (MCA and DoLS Manager at Shropshire Council) explains that “taking all practicable steps” is much more than just facilitating communication with the person, but crucially, taking the steps to help the person make the decision. It is only if there are no practicable steps left (because they’ve all been unsuccessful) that practitioners should then move to carry out the capacity assessment.

As Lorraine points out, this places a real responsibility on practitioners to help people make the decision and will require practitioners to “front-load” the work. Not only could this actually save time for professionals in the long run (as there would be no need for best interests meetings) but this is fundamentally part of the cultural shift towards empowerment of individuals encapsulated by the MCA.