Victoria Butler-Cole KC
Year of call: 2005
Silk: 2019
Newsletter
Mental Capacity Report - May 2021
Welcome to the May 2021 Mental Capacity Report. Highlights this month include:
(1) In the Health, Welfare and Deprivation of Liberty Report: a judgment looking beyond the diagnosis, paying for sex and the Court of Protection, navigating autism and indoctrination and relevant updates about visiting guidance in relation to care homes;
(2) In the Property and Affairs Report: a staunch judicial defence of Banks v Goodfellow, Child Trust Funds and capacity, and updates from the OPG;
(3) In the Practice and Procedure Report: discharging a party without notice, the white leopard of litigation capacity and CoP statistics;
(4) In the Wider Context Report: DNACPR decisions during COVID-19, litigation capacity in the civil context, and the interaction between capacity and the MHA 1983 in two different contexts;
(5) In the Scotland Report: the new Mental Welfare Commission practice guidance on capacity, rights, and sexual relationships. Our Scottish team has been too busy making law in different countries to write more this month, but will bring updates next month about legislative developments on the cards as the new Scottish administration finds its feet.
You can watch Alex's walkthrough of this month's report here.
You can find our past issues, our case summaries, and more on our dedicated sub-site here, where you can also find updated versions of both our capacity and best interests guides. We have taken a deliberate decision not to cover all the host of COVID-19 related matters that might have a tangential impact upon mental capacity in the Report. Chambers has created a dedicated COVID-19 page with resources, seminars, and more, here; Alex maintains a resources page for MCA and COVID-19 here, and Neil a page here. If you want more information on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which we frequently refer to in this Report, we suggest you go to the Small Places website run by Lucy Series of Cardiff University.
