You’ll have gathered that I’m doing catchup with my intray this week, after two months of being away a lot.

There’s a whole load of new leaflets about the Mental Capacity Act 2005, including stuff about the IMCA service and in particular about DOLS. No, that’s not a female type of IMCA as in guys and…, it’s the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards for vulnerable adults.

These are the arrangements that have been brought in because of the Bournewood case, and affect people working in hospices and care homes where they might reduce the freedom of a patient or resident for their own good, restraining the, not allowing them home, not allowing visitors that they want and so on.

We’ve just had a worry here, because of the very common situation where members of a family all have different views about what to do for the best for a patient. But DOLS is not about what families do to each other, it’s about what care homes, hospices and the like do or don’t do. It’s always best for us to help families find a way through their disagreements, so they can agree how each should be involved.

You can download or ask for copies of various leaflets at the Office of the Public Guardian’s website (no that’s not The Guardian newspaper, so you won’t be sullied by left-wing journalism):

http://www.publicguardian.gov.uk/forms/forms.htm