My Mum is currently living at home and has carers coming in for four hours a day. She has always liked going out for walks and continues to do so. She has, on occasion, got lost and the police have had to bring her back. We've fitted a GPS tracker on her walking stick and cameras in the house. The GPS tracker has a geofence and an app will issue an alert if Mum leaves the area if it is running. We want the carers to have the app running. One of them told me this was no problem and she 'always has people in the area' and so could get one of them to pick Mum up. Since then I've called the carers and they won't confirm or deny this. The council have claimed that for them to do this a Community Deprivation of Liberty is required. They claim the UK Supreme Court has come up with an acid test for this which is, quoting from their letter,
"The Supreme Court said that a person will be deprived of their liberty if they lack mental capacity to make decisions about care arrangements,
and if:
1. They are subject to continuous supervision and control
2. They are not free to leave.
This is what the Supreme Court called the ‘acid test’."
Our position is that there is a clear implied and between 1. and 2. I.e. both these conditions must be met. Also the person in question must lack mental capacity legally. They have told us we must submit Mum to a test of this at their discretion. When we said we need more time to think of this they have said they will go to the Office of the Public Guardian to get our Lasting Power of Attorney cancelled. Both my brother and have LPOAs for Mum for both Property and Finance and Health and Welfare. Obviously if they can strip our LPOAs and Mum's mental capacity they can do basically anything to her. Last time she was in hospital the hospital tried to get us to acceded to an end of life pathway involving midazolam and morphine and it was only because we had LPOAs we were able to stop them. So we must stop the council if we are to protect her life.
It seems very likely, almost certain in fact, that this is going to end up in court and so I've contacted a lawyer and started this Crowdfunder.