Explains what the Mental Capacity Act 2005 is and why it matters and is intended to help board members of care providers ensure vulnerable service users are not missing out on protections which are their legal right. The paper briefly discusses: capacity and consent; consent on someone else’s behalf; acting where people lack capacity to make their own decisions; best interests; restraint and restriction of liberty; deprivation of liberty; and ill-treatment and neglect. The paper includes a table setting out some questions board members of care providers might want to ask their officers and managers to get assurance that the MCA is being properly applied throughout their organisations.

The purpose of this document is to set out the safeguarding roles, duties and responsibilities of all organisations commissioning NHS health and social care. The framework’s aims include: identifying and clarify how relationships between health and other systems work at both strategic and operational levels to safeguard children, young people and adults at risk of abuse or neglect; setting out the legal framework; promoting empowerment and autonomy for adults, including those who lack capacity for a particular decision as embodied in the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA), implementing an approach which appropriately balances this with safeguarding.