Mental Capacity Act - professionals
The Mental Capacity Act (2005) provides a statutory framework to empower and protect vulnerable people who may not be able to make their own decisions. It makes it clear who can take decisions on a person's behalf and how to go about this. It also enables people to plan ahead for a time when they may lose capacity.
The Act has reformed previous arrangements regarding Powers of Attorney and has provided a new Public Guardian and Court of Protection who are concerned with Financial, Property, Health and Welfare matters relating to people who lack capacity.
The Act introduces new criminal offences (Section 44) of wilful neglect and wilful ill treatment of a person who lacks capacity.
The Mental Capacity Act assumes people have capacity unless it can be proved otherwise and outlines steps and the actions to be taken to establish whether a person has capacity or not.
Anyone who is involved in the provision of care or treatment to an adult eg relative, friend, volunteer or professional will be a decision maker at some point. These pages are intended to support you to implement the Act, either in your capacity as a Decision Maker, working with partner agencies or as a service user or carer. They should be read in conjunction with the Codes of Practice for the Mental Capacity Act (2005) and the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards.
Everyone has a duty to ensure that they are aware of their own responsibilities under the Mental Capacity Act, as their input may be required in supporting a relevant person to ensure that the best outcome is achieved for them.
Useful links to the Act, to the code of practice and other information
Downloadable documents
- A guide for people who work in health and social care (Adobe PDF format, 330kb)
- A guide for advice workers (Adobe PDF format, 280kb)
- Code of Practice (Adobe PDF format, 1.4mb)
- Salford multi-agency policy (Adobe PDF format, 275kb)
If you are unable to view documents of these types, our downloads page provides links to viewing software.
This page was last updated on 30 March 2010
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