Whose decision?
This report found that in the months leading up to the implementation of the Mental Capacity Act, many health and social care staff felt confused about mental capacity issues.
98% of staff interviewed for the report, said they felt they needed more training on mental capacity and making capacity assessments.
The report’s recommendations for the health and social care sectors include:
- ensuring coherent strategies are in place to communicate guidance and training about how to apply the Act to frontline staff
- an audit of current knowledge and training to identify and plug gaps that need to be filled
- more resources to be employed to support service users and their carers in playing as full a role as possible in decisions about their care
Researchers spoke to professionals working with vulnerable adults throughout the social care and health sectors, as well as to service users themselves and their carers. While they found some good practice, the overall picture was one of confusion about what mental capacity means and the criteria needed for assessments of capacity to be made.
The next stage of the Foundations’ work will look at how people’s attitudes and knowledge about mental capacity have changed since the Act came into force.
The report, key findings, summary of findings and an easy read version of the report are available to download (PDF) below:
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