SCIE Report 62: Managing the transfer of responsibilities under the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards: a resource for local authorities and healthcare commissioners
Published: November 2012
Review date: November 2015
This report is intended to help people plan for the changes to the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards, which comes into force from 1 April 2013. It describes the changes to the identity of the supervisory body in health settings and offers guidance on how local authorities, hospitals, primary care trusts (PCTs) and Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) can work together to ensure that the rights of vulnerable patients are protected.
Key messages
- Primary care trusts (PCTs) will be abolished from 1 April 2013.
- The supervisory body responsibilities held by a PCT will be transferred to the local authority where the person has ordinary residence.
- The supervisory body responsibilities of the National Assembly for Wales remain unchanged. The National Assembly is the supervisory body in all cases where care and/or treatment in hospital is commissioned by the National Assembly or a Local Health Board (LHB) unless the person has ordinary residence in England.
- Each hospital managing authority will need to continue to actively understand the wider requirements of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
- Each hospital managing authority will need to become more familiar with practice concerning ordinary residence.
- In preparation for the transfer, the ‘sending’ PCT supervisory body will need to identify the ‘receiving’ local authority for each patient subject to a standard authorisation. This will not necessarily be the local authority the hospital is situated in.
- Each local authority will need to be prepared to receive applications from hospitals in Wales or any part of England.
- Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) will be responsible for commissioning services in hospitals that comply with the Mental Capacity Act and the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards.
- CCGs retain responsibility for dealing with matters relating to authorisations granted by PCTs prior to 1 April 2013.
