Since last April many hospitals and care homes have had the power to deprive people of their liberty.
Since last April many hospitals and care homes have had the power to deprive people of their liberty. This is the result of the DoLS—the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards.
The government prefers to see the DoLS as protection: a way of preventing the arbitrary detention of the old and the incapable. It is certainly true that the DoLS were introduced to fill a gap in the law; a gap rather embarrassingly revealed by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the 2004 case of Bournewood v United Kingdom [2004] All ER (D) 39 (Oct). Presumably, therefore, it would be a cause for concern if the new safeguards were not being used.
The government forecast that before the spring, around 21,000 people would have their cases assessed under the DoLS and a quarter of them would then be brought formally within the safeguards. According to the latest statistics, that is simply not going to happen.
l Of the more-than-300 local authorities and Primary Care Trusts charged
