{"id":106,"date":"2014-03-05T11:22:47","date_gmt":"2014-03-05T11:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/wccop\/?p=106"},"modified":"2014-03-05T17:15:39","modified_gmt":"2014-03-05T17:15:39","slug":"introducing-our-study-on-court-of-protection-files","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/wccop\/introducing-our-study-on-court-of-protection-files\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing… our study on Court of Protection files"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to our new website about a research project at Cardiff Law School on Welfare Cases in the Court of Protection<\/i>.\u00a0 The Court of Protection is a new court which was created under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) to deal with disputes or concerns about issues relating to a person\u2019s mental capacity and best interests.\u00a0 The Court of Protection hears a wide range of cases, and the majority of its work involves property and affairs issues.\u00a0 However, it also deals with cases about health and welfare issues \u2013 and these are \u00a0the subject of our project.<\/p>\n

What are health and welfare cases in the Court of Protection?<\/h3>\n

Health and welfare cases in the Court of Protection cover lots of different issues \u2013 such as where a person should live, whether they should have a particular medical treatment, or with whom they should have contact.\u00a0 Often these cases raise acute emotional and personal issues for the people concerned \u2013 which is one reason why the Court of Protection usually sits in private.\u00a0 This means that the public and media are not allowed to attend court hearings unless the judge has given them permission to, and people are not allowed to tell others about what happened in court without permission from the judge.\u00a0 This is to help protect the privacy of the people using the court to resolve personal issues.\u00a0 However, increasingly the Court of Protection will publish anonymised judgments so that the public knows more about its work. New \u2018transparency guidance\u2019<\/a> has been issued by the Court\u2019s president \u2013 Sir James Munby, and this will lead to the publication of more judgments where the parties\u2019 anonymity is protected.<\/p>\n

What questions does this research try to answer?<\/h3>\n

Our research concerns the process<\/i> of using the Court of Protection to resolve health and welfare issues.\u00a0 We are interested in this for a range of reasons, in our project we want to answer such questions as :<\/p>\n

    \n
  • How accessible<\/i> is the Court of Protection for those who \u00a0need to use it, and what do people think could be done to improve accessibility?<\/li>\n
  • What do different people think about how the Court of Protection should manage the balance between \u2018transparency\u2019 and the rights to privacy of those using the Court?<\/li>\n
  • How does the Court manage the balance between ensuring that matters are dealt with as speedily as possible (efficiency) whilst also ensuring that matters are considered thoroughly where necessary?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    We think that these are very complicated issues, and so we want to look at this from a range of perspectives, including the views of those who work in the court and the views of those using the court.<\/p>\n

    How will you find the answers to these questions?<\/h3>\n

    A first step in our project involves gathering good quality statistical information about who is using the court, and why.\u00a0 This is important because often the cases given a high profile in the media and in the research literature may \u00a0actually be quite unusual, and may not necessarily represent the typical work of the Court\u00a0.\u00a0 So we want to collect statistical data answering such questions as:<\/p>\n

      \n
    • Who usually applies to the Court of Protection to use its welfare jurisdiction?\u00a0 Is it family members, public bodies such as local authorities or the NHS, or people who are alleged to lack capacity?\u00a0 Does this differ for different types of cases?<\/li>\n
    • What kinds of issues does the Court typically have to consider?\u00a0 What are the most common issues, and what issues are more unusual?<\/li>\n
    • Are families who use the Court of Protection\u2019s welfare jurisdiction usually assisted by a solicitor or a barrister?\u00a0 Do they often have legal aid?<\/li>\n
    • How long do Court of Protection welfare cases typically take, and what are the typical stages of the process?<\/li>\n
    • How often do people who are said to lack capacity participate in Court of Protection proceedings?<\/li>\n
    • What kinds of evidence does the Court usually call for in arriving at a decision?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      We are planning to do this by looking at a large sample of the Court of Protection\u2019s files for health and welfare cases, and putting data into a database.\u00a0 We will use this database to generate statistics and charts to help describe the Court\u2019s work and processes to other people.\u00a0 We don\u2019t want to use what are \u00a0called \u2018qualitative\u2019 research methods on the Court\u2019s files, where the researcher \u00a0tells individual people\u2019s stories or reports things that people have said, because it is much harder to protect people\u2019s identities that way and different rules apply to researchers doing this kind of research.\u00a0 We won\u2019t be collecting any names or addresses, and we will ensure that we do \u00a0not publish any information which means people could be identified from other information.<\/p>\n

      How have you worked with the Court of Protection to set up this study?<\/h3>\n

      Setting up a project like this is difficult, because of the laws \u00a0protecting the \u00a0privacy of people using the Court of Protection.\u00a0 However, we have worked closely with the Court of Protection, whose staff and judges have worked hard to help us arrive at a system that obeys the law in this area and will protect the privacy of the Court\u2019s users.\u00a0 Everyone at the Court of Protection has been \u00a0most helpful and open in enabling us to set up this project, and we hope that our findings will be useful to the Court as well as other people with an interest in its work.\u00a0 We are working with other experts in this field, who are on our advisory group, to help us ensure we make the best use of this opportunity as possible.\u00a0 If you have any thoughts on research questions that we should consider in this aspect of our work, please feel free to make suggestions!<\/p>\n

      When will you tell us what you found?<\/h3>\n

      This study of the Court of Protection\u2019s files will take some time to complete.\u00a0 We hope to look at a first sample in summer 2014, and if our funding is renewed then we plan to look at another \u2013 larger \u2013 sample in 2015 or 2016.\u00a0 When we have conducted our analyses, we will post them here so that you can read about what we found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Welcome to our new website about a research project at Cardiff Law School on Welfare Cases in the Court of Protection.\u00a0 The Court of Protection is a new court which was created under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) to deal with disputes or concerns about issues relating to a person\u2019s mental capacity and best<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1346,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-public","category-specialists"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/wccop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/wccop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/wccop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/wccop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1346"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/wccop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/wccop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154,"href":"http:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/wccop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions\/154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/wccop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/wccop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/wccop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}