question for belinda

[Chaseonthecase]

have just found out my young person has complained of being assaulted by a staff member. He lacks capacity and I’m told he has been interviewed by other staff and asked to act out the assault. Are they allowed to do this without asking my permission. I am court appointed deputy for everything.

[LawLover Expert]

Well if you have deputyship for finance and property, and deputyship for welfare, which is not common, but perfectly possible, it would be on the basis of your young person already lacking in capacity with regard to a very wide range of issues.

If he were being accused of something, he would need an appropriate adult with him at the police station, but communicating with him and asking him to act out what happened does not involve any activity that involves touching him or restricting his freedom of movement, so nobody at the provider NEEDS your consent to what they've asked him to do. And in terms of safeguarding - which is a freestanding obligation, in regulatory terms (via CQC) and part of their duty of care and no doubt contractually required as well through local authority commissioning contracts, they would have had to investigate straight away.

Overall, I think it's more of an ethical issue - it is not PROFESSIONAL of the provider to do this without involving you, because you are the statutory agent for your young person. He could theoretically have chosen to refuse to act out what has happened to him, and so you could have refused too.

I don't think it's likely you would have done that, though, on his behalf, if you had been asked. So overall I don't think it's something you should take any more action about, other than to say you think you should have been asked and it was unprofessional not to because there should have been an independent witness there, as to what he then did act out.