Home
> Legislation > MCA
> Responding to Incapacity
Mental Capacity Act
What will have to change about responding to incapacity?
• We don’t often restrain incapacitated people or use reasonable force to ensure that they get the services they need.
• ASWs rely on the police, but the police only have powers in relation to the Mental Health Act and public order and safety. Ambulance staff rely on care managers and ASWs; security staff on the door of A&E take this approach too.
• We say it’s because ‘the staff should not be put at risk’.
• But the result is that any incapacitated person who is physically challenging, doesn’t get help, even when actual harm is likely to befall them. Why isn’t that negligence or disability discrimination? Wouldn’t we think it was, if the fire service took this approach and left panic-stricken people in burning buildings for fear of being kicked?
• The Act could change this culture, if there is the will to train people to do it safely.
• We don’t detain people at all if we can possibly help it, but we will be doing so openly, under the Bournewood safeguards, in 2008.
