Liberty Protection Safeguards
Book your place now on a briefing session in Summer 2019 to learn about the replacement scheme for the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards
The Mental Capacity (Amendment) Act 2019 received the Royal Assent on 16th May 2019. The purpose of the Bill is to abolish the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) and to replace them with a completely new system, the Liberty Protection Safeguards (LPS).
In the coming weeks an implementation date for the LPS will be agreed. This is almost certain to be some time in the financial year April 2020 - March 2021. You can follow the Act's progress here.
Please note: the LPS will apply from age 16, and in all settings (residential, hospital, community etc). The Bill as passed by Parliament is based on the Law Commission's original proposals of March 2017, but those proposals have been significantly amended along the way.
On that basis we are organising a series of Briefing Sessions in various locations around England and Wales, to be delivered by Tim Spencer-Lane. Tim is a lawyer with the Law Commission who headed their review of the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards in 2015-17. The Law Commission's full report, published in March 2017, recommended abolishing the DoLS and bringing in the new system of LPS. Recently Tim has been seconded to the Department of Health & Social Care where he has worked on the Liberty Protection Safeguards.
Many of you will have attended one of the Briefing Sessions which Tim delivered for us in the Summer of 2017. The sessions in 2019 will follow a similar format (ie morning and afternoon sessions at each venue) where Tim will outline in detail how the new system is intended to work. And once again there will be plenty of opportunities for questions and clarifications.
The locations
- East Midlands (Nottingham)
- East Anglia (Dereham)
- South Coast (Southampton)
- West London (Ealing)
- East London (Romford)
- North West (Widnes)
- South West (Newton Abbott)
- South Wales (Cardiff)
- North East (York)
- West Midlands (Birmingham)
We have tried to spread the locations around England and Wales so that everyone has one within reasonable travelling distance.
The dates
Demand has been high, and a couple of sessions are already nearly full, so please do reserve your place as soon as possible.
Places are £60.00 plus VAT per person. You can pay by Paypal, credit/debit card, internet banking or cheque. Or if you prefer we can send you an invoice - but please note in this case that your place is not confirmed until we receive full payment (payment terms are 14 days from date of invoice). The system will automatically email you a record of your booking within a few minutes.
Should I start preparing now, or wait for the Code of Practice to be published?
We are aware of some advice circulating to the effect that there is no point in attending any training in the Liberty Protection Safeguards until the Code of Practice is published. We respectfully disagree with this advice. The Code of Practice will be an important document, of course, but it won't change the facts of the legislation which have now been passed by Parliament.
We thought about this issue last year when we were setting the dates for our LPS Briefing Sessions, and we decided the right time to deliver the sessions was when the legislation was passed, not when the Code of Practice has been published. The Code of Practice may not be published for many months, perhaps only a short while before implementation date (which is still to be decided).
It seems to us to be much more sensible to start planning for the changes now, rather than to wait and wait and then suddenly have a panic next year when the Code is published.