Vulnerable dementia patients could be locked up for three years without review under ‘rushed’ government reform

People with mental health conditions, learning disabilities and dementia could be locked away for as long as three years without a review under “rushed” reforms put forward by the government.

Charities have expressed dismay at changes to deprivation of liberty safeguards, used to ensure people without capacity to consent to their care are not detained inappropriately.

They warn the measures would create “worrying conflicts of interest” by giving care home operators a greater role in the reviews and assessing whether their paying residents are receiving good care.

Organisations, including Mind, Liberty, Parkinson’s UK, and the National Autistic Society were among 13 to sign a letter to The Times, which said that the Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill being considered by MPs would create “an entirely unfit new system of protection”.

It said: “Alarmingly, the bill proposes to triple the time that people can be deprived of their liberty without review (from one to three years) while not doing enough to guarantee that all patients have access to independent and impartial advocates.”

It added: “The result is a rushed, incomplete and unworkable bill that will replace one dysfunctional system with another.”

A 2014 Supreme Court ruling enshrined deprivation of liberty safeguards (DoLS) in the Mental Capacity Act 2005, to ensure independent oversight of the powers in care homes and hospitals so they’re used in patients’ best interests.

Council-appointed independent assessors are responsible for reviewing DoLS decisions, however they take on average four months to complete – while 48,000 people have waited more than a year for a decision.

The government’s proposed changes are intended to streamline this process, however critics have said it is cost-cutting at the expense of vulnerable people.

Half of the 227,000 DoLS approved each year are for people with dementia, and Jeremy Hughes, head of the Alzheimer’s Society told The Times: “Under the proposals people with dementia find themselves in a worrying situation, unable to comment [honestly] on the quality of the care they receive, because care home managers would be in charge of asking residents about their care.

“This … creates a potential conflict of interest.”

The Department for Health and Social Care said: “Our bill will reform a broken system and ensure vulnerable people can more quickly access legal protections. We have listened carefully to feedback from stakeholders and parliamentarians and made amendments, including excluding care home managers from granting authorisations or completing assessments. This will ensure all applications are independently scrutinised.”