The Mental Capacity Act is a piece of UK legislation which aims to protect adults who lack the mental capacity to make decisions about their treatment or care. The Act applies equally to people born with severe learning difficulties as well as those who have become mentally incapacitated through illness or accident.
Why is the Mental Capacity Act important?
This Act safeguards affected individuals and ensures their freedoms are not unfairly removed from them. In doing so, it assumes that people have the capacity to make decisions for themselves unless it is proven otherwise, allows them to express their preferences and when necessary, to appoint someone that they trust to make decisions on their behalf.
How can someone be appointed to make someone else’s decisions?
The simplest way for someone who worries that they may one day lose mental capacity to appoint a trusted individual to assume decision-making responsibility on their behalf is by obtaining an LPA online, from a company such as https://powerofattorneyonline.co.uk.
An LPA allows an individual to nominate someone to act on their behalf and in their best interest in the event that they become too unwell or mentally compromised to make those decisions of their own accord. The LPA only comes into effect should it be triggered by severe ill health or a traumatic accident that leaves the individual without mental capacity.
Who must abide by the Mental Capacity Act?
All medical professionals must abide by the Mental Capacity Act when assessing patients and must liaise with the LPA attorney if one has been appointed.
