Supreme Court ruling set to remove vital safeguards for hundreds of thousands of disabled people

[IwantToRetire]

Campaigners have expressed “deep concern” over a ruling by the Supreme Court that could “fundamentally” alter the lives of hundreds of thousands of disabled people who rely on the health and social care systems.

This week’s ruling has over-turned a 2014 decision by the same court – which became known as the Cheshire West ruling – which had widened the definition of who would be protected by the system that protects service-users who are unable to consent to restrictions placed on their liberty.

Campaigners say the latest Supreme Court ruling has “dismantled” those protections.

Continues at https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/supreme-court-ruling-set-to-remove-vital-safeguards-for-hundreds-of-thousands-of-disabled-people/

Severely disabled people aged 16 and over will now be able to give consent to their care arrangements despite not having the capacity to do so, the Supreme Court has ruled.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3e2lq58p87o

I think this is the ruling
https://supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc_2025_0042_press_summary_3c58c87fdc.pdf

Please note MNHQ I posted this is FWR because in every instance the impact on women of legal issues, impact women differently.

Please return this to FWR.

Thanks

Not sure why but MNHQ thought this wasn't an issue that women with a feminist view point might want to discuss.

So they moved it to another forum.

So now that's back I will admit I am not expert in this area, not have to address issues of disabilities in relation to my life or those near to me.

So even just as a point of information about the change I hope this may be useful.

Thanks @MNHQ

Thanks for the thread. I didn't quite understand it, maybe someone could explain in simple terms for me?

I don’t understand what this is about either.
If anyone does, please would you explain it?

Please note MNHQ I posted this is FWR because in every instance the impact on women of legal issues, impact women differently

How do you think this judgment will impact women differently?

I cant say I really understand as I dont have the relevant experience.

But taken from the DPAC article:

In simple terms, campaigners say the ruling means the law will now class fewer people as being deprived of their liberty and if fewer people fall into that category, fewer people will automatically get the legal checks and protections that used to follow.

That could ease pressure on an overstretched Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) system, but campaigners say it does so by narrowing who gets protected in the first place.

They warn that disabled people in locked or highly restrictive care settings may now find it harder to get independent oversight or challenge what is happening to them.

So the previous ruling (Cheshire West) included a larger number of people with disabilities as being "deprived of their liberty" and as such they were supposed to get more oversight from professionals to ensure their rights were not being abused / overlooked.

But by getting rid of this ruling fewer people who may in fact need support re decision making etc., will now have the automatic safeguard of a professional assessing decisions.

I am sure it is not as simple as that, but as the article implies that part of the reason for doing this was to cut costs by having fewer people needed to oversee the rights of disabled people I thought it concerning.

There are such a range of contributors to FWR I sort of felt someone with experience or knowledge might be able to say if it really is a threat or just a "common sense" adjustment.

I dont because i have no personal knowledge or experience.

But as on other threads about different areas of life, more often than not how women's lives are impacted is different from the male norm.

That's the whole point of having a feminist forum where women can talk about that.

I think the confusion about whether or not this belongs in FWR is the result of just posting a news story without giving any context at all about what it is you want to discuss.

It certainly puzzled me. On first reading I thought you had mistakenly conflated the issues of consent in relation to deprivation of liberty with consent in relation to the often-cited feminist issue of ensuring same-sex intimate care.

Surely if an article is worth posting, then it is also worth writing a sentence or two about what questions/issues/etc it gives rise to?

I battled through the two articles to try to work out what your intentions were. Unfortunately, neither of them is written very clearly so the interesting legal distinctions at stake - between 'capacity' and the ability to communicate feelings and preferences - aren't very well teased out.

It does seem like a devastating loss of protection for some of the most vulnerable people in society. But it didn't seem like there were any evident gendered issues.

I’m not sure this is strictly speaking a feminist issue. Isn’t it more an issue that impacts, for example, people with dementia? Or people with mental health issues?

And if you want a debate then some perspective on your viewpoint and why you think that is helpful.

Maybe you could make it clearer in future on your posts whether:
A) you are suggesting that there is a difference in impact and if so specify what that is; or
B) are asking for others who know about the area to comment if they think there is a difference in terms of impact on the sexes.

Your current posting style is unhelpful and leading to confusion.

Cynically I might say that if fewer people have a DOLS, it will cut down the care bill for the government, because if you are in a care home with a DOLS you have your care paid by the state

I have an adult child who is subject to DOLS from time to time and I don’t understand either 😩

Not always, some people fund their own care & can still be subject to a Deprivation of Liberty.

DoLs teams across the country are awaiting guidelines/test cases but my understanding is. Until this change a person who lacked capacity to understanding their care & accommodation needs & were not free to leave the care home & subject to supervision & control met the threshold for a DoLs. The change seems to be a person can still lack capacity but validly consent e.g happy/settled/accepting of their arrangement which goes against usual practice (how can you consent when you don't understand). This is likely to lead to less refferals & less oversight so yes, not great for people in this situation.

Thank you @Happyholidays78

@IwantToRetire I had a very long chat with ChatGPT last week because I wanted to understand the judgment, didn't know anything about the issue, and also didn't trust the statements by charities, by a BBC report, etc, knowing how unreliable they have been re trans issues.

It's a very complex issue, not as simple as painted in the press, so I'll just copy-paste the summary by ChatGPT.

"The real issue is awkwardly technical: the judgment does not simply remove rights, nor does it simply empower disabled people. It changes the legal threshold for when Article 5 safeguards are triggered. That matters, but its practical effect depends on a system that was already failing to process the old volume properly.

So, the more accurate account is less headline-friendly:

A broad but overloaded safeguard has been replaced by a narrower, more discretionary test. Whether that is good or bad depends on whether the system uses the narrower test to focus on serious cases, or merely to avoid scrutiny.
That is much closer to the truth. It is also much less useful for campaigning, and much less useful for news packaging."

Thank you.