Deprivation of Liberties Safeguards (DoLS) were set up as a vital barrier in the prevention of vulnerable people, lacking capacity, losing their human rights. A recent NHS report into DoLS applications has highlighted some rather worrying statistics.
The NHS have published their recent findings into the Deprivation of Liberties Safeguards (DoLS) data collection for the period April 1st 2017-March 31st 2018. The data suggests that the NHS are struggling to complete the application process with increased volume putting pressure on the system.
227,400 completed DoLS applications were received from a managing authority to supervisory bodies in 2017-18; this is a 4.7% increase on the year earlier. Of this total number 114,370 were deemed as urgent and 113,030 viewed as standard cases.
However, in addition to these overwhelming applications, there was also a backlog of 108,545 applications to process, with over 43,000 considered urgent cases.
Throughout the year, the NHS were able to process and complete 181,787 DoLS applications, 87,575 of which were considered urgent.
110,980 of the applications were granted in this time; this equates to a 15.2% increase from the 96,340 granted DoLS requests a year earlier. 43,060 of these requests were urgent.
Worryingly though, of the 335,945 applications, taken from both the 2017-2018 applications and the backlog applications from 2016-2017, 37% were not completed; 57,000 of these were viewed as urgent. This was also a 15.7% increase on the 108,545 applications the year before.
Although some of these applications were not processed because of a change in circumstance or death of the vulnerable person concerned, there are still a huge amount of applications falling through NHS cracks.
The average length of time needed to complete a DoLS application also increased from the 120 expected days in 2016-2017 to 138 days in 2017-2018.
When DoLS were put in place to protect the most vulnerable people in society, it is sad to think that many applications are taking longer than these people should be expected to wait. It is also disappointing that the NHS are being stretched so far. Despite increasing the application completion volume that should be considered a win for the NHS, more people that ever are being delayed in this process, which unfortunately stand out as the headline reading.
Does more need to be done to help the NHS in this matter? Do you have clients that have been impacted by these factors?
