1. Offering only one choice at lunchtime because the chef has been ill for three days?
2. Offering only one choice at lunchtime every weekend?
3. Locking all residents in their room, after lunch everyday to allow carers to tidy up?
4. Continued refusal to allow a son to visit his mother?
5. Asking a son not to visit his mother one day because his mother is unwell?
6. Frequently tying a boisterous resident to a chair during mealtimes?
7. Restraining a resident to give her life saving injection?
Thank you!
I “glanced” at the “Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) at a glance” website and found it quite interesting because many of the activities that cannot be performed today were SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) before the 1980’s.
Forty years ago, psychiatric hospitals looked like and were run like the hospital in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (which was an actual hospital and some of the patients in the movie were actual psychiatric patients of that hospital). It was common to use restraints, either physical or chemical (such as medications), to control a patient and to have locked wards/nursing units. (We have locked Memory Care Units today for people suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s’ who tend to wander or are violent.) As society changed and civil rights became more important, the rights of people with psychiatric illnesses became more important. It was thought that “Society” could take care of these people and that they did not / do not need to be hospitalized. Now more and more of these people with psychiatric illnesses are ending up in ER Departments repeatedly or in jail or prison.
In regards to your questions:
Most of the activities violate a person’s rights but there are exceptions, such as:
Number 4: “Continued refusal to allow a son to visit his mother?” has been a complaint of some posters because either the POA or guardian refuses to allow the son (or daughter or other relative) to visit his/her mother OR because the son has been abusive towards his mother while she was residing in a long term care facility and the administrator of the LTC facility decides that the son cannot visit his mother for her own safety.
Number 5: “Asking a son not to visit his mother one day because his mother is unwell?” happens when many of the residents in a long term care facility have a contagious illness such as influenza and the facility does not want visitors to spread the illness to other residents or to the residents’ families.
I hope that this answers your question as to whether the questions you asked are lawful or not.
#5 - keeping family away when people are ill used to be the policy here until somebody realized that they were sometimes keeping loved ones from being together during what may ultimately be their last days, because when someone who is frail and elderly gets the flu that can well be the outcome. Now visitors are allowed 24/7, with proper precautions of course.
(which may have nothing to do with the rules where Jenbee is, lol)
Oh, and I suppose you might possibly caution someone not to visit when there is an illness but you can't actually prevent it.
Jenbee, what is your REAL motive for asking these questions? "To stir the pot" or to see what "non-healthcare professionals" in the USA know about British laws?
https://www.scie.org.uk/mca/dols/at-a-glance
For wishful thinking and lovely-in-theories, I can't remember when I saw a better piece of legislation. I probably shouldn't say that. I take it back.
Anyway - there are some interesting worked examples for the general reader.
https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/get-support/legal-financial/deprivation-liberty-safeguards-dols
Thank goodness, I'm pretty sure that the OP is not actually dealing with all these problems. It certainly would be some facility, eh!
Jenbee, are you doing a multiple choice paper or giving full answers? And what jurisdiction's DOLS, by the way? They do vary.