Age UK warns of risk to older people being unjustifiably deprived of liberty

Staffing and time pressures in social care risk the “nightmare scenario” that older people could be being unjustifiably deprived of their freedom, Age UK has warned in a new report.

The older people’s charity warned that the system aimed at keeping people safe in care homes “for an alarming number of older people is not working at all”.

Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) are a legal procedure used to keep a person who lacks capacity to consent to their care safe from harm in a care home or hospital, such as those with dementia or mental health problems.

Chronic under-funding of the scheme by central Government has led to serious problems with its local administration, leading to an ever-growing backlog of DoLS cases that is so vast it can now probably never be eradicated.

The charity said 84% of people subject to a DoLS application in 2022/23 were aged 65 years or over so problems with the system particularly affect older people.

The estimated number of uncompleted DoLS applications has remained at over 100,000 in recent years, with 126,000 applications having gone uncompleted in 2022/23, it said.

For those that were completed, the process took an average of 156 days, much longer than the 21-day target.