Best Interests Assessor Role: An Opportunity or a ‘Dead End’ for Adult Social Workers?

Hubbard, Rachel

Abstract

© 2017 British Association of Social Workers. This opinion article explores the significance of the Best Interests Assessor role in England and Wales for social workers working with adults. It considers the challenges of the role following the Supreme Court’s Cheshire West (2014) judgement and the implications for BIAs of the Law Commission’s 2017 plans for replacing DoLS with the ‘Liberty Protection Safeguards’. The author explains why they consider the BIA role to be a valuable one for the status of adult social work as well as for people who may lack capacity to uphold their human rights, with some reservations about the risk of diluting the safeguards the current role represents for those vulnerable people.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 23, 2017
• Publication Date: Mar 15, 2018
• Deposit Date: Sep 29, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 13, 2018
• Journal: Practice
• Print ISSN: 0950-3153
• Electronic ISSN: 1742-4909
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 30
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 83-98
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09503153.2017.1372738
• Keywords: best interests assessor, mental capacity act, adult social work, deprivation of liberty safeguards, human rights
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/881149
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09503153.2017.1372738
• Additional Information: Additional Information : This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Practice: Social Work in Action on 13/09/2017 available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09503153.2017.1372738.
• Contract Date: Sep 29, 2017