New Manchester study suggests changes to help community disability teams assess patient’s mental capacity
New research findings, published in the British Journal of Learning Disabilities, suggest some changes could be made to help staff when they’re assessing people’s ability to make decisions.
The study looked at health and social care practitioners’ experiences of assessing mental capacity in a community learning disability team. It was undertaken by Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s (CMFT) Dr Daniel Ratcliff and Dr Melanie Chapman who are both based within adult community learning disability services (Manchester Learning Disability Partnership).
Dr Chapman and Dr Ratcliff
The research had two aims; to explore the experiences, challenges and barriers in undertaking mental capacity assessments amongst health and social care practitioners, and to identify ways to improve the quality of assessments and help practitioners feel more confident.
The Mental Capacity Act (MCA), brought into force in 2007, says when and how to assess someone’s ability to make a decision and how best to support them to do this. A number of previous studies have examined the knowledge of learning disability practitioners around the MCA and the success of training programmes, but Drs Ratcliff and Chapman wanted to use a qualitative methodology by way of interviews, to find out more about the experiences of staff in community learning disability teams.
Eight workers were interviewed about their experiences of assessing people’s ability to make decisions, including learning disability nurses, a physiotherapist, an occupational therapist, a speech and language therapist and two qualified social workers.
Dr Ratcliff said: “The study indicates that the introduction of the MCA has been a positive step and that the generic provisions and guidance laid down in the MCA lay the basic building blocks for the assessment of mental capacity. However, there are numerous other factors that can impact on the quality and outcome of these assessments.
“Staff said that there were a number of areas that they felt were important and which helped them to do good assessments. They also said there were some things that they found difficult. It is important to help people make decisions for themselves where they can and to help them when they can’t. Whilst the study reported here is small scale, it is hoped that the findings will help to address this gap.”
Dr Chapman added:
The current study identifies a range of challenges and complexities but it also highlights that the MCA has produced many benefits for practitioners and supports the overall positive attitude towards this piece of legislation found in previous studies.
“This was a small-scale study producing a snapshot of experiences of mental capacity assessing within one service. It would be interesting to explore whether similar issues exist in other community learning disability services, or indeed, services working with other client groups and whether introducing service developments can improve the experience of capacity assessing for practitioners. It could also be useful to explore the perspectives of people with learning disabilities, paid and family carers on the process of mental capacity assessments.”
