SCR: Murdered care leaver wrongly denied adult care assessment. Case review also exposes Mental Capacity Act knowledge gap among children’s social workers.
A Serious Case Review (SCR) was commissioned by Stockport Safeguarding Adults Board following the murder of Martin Hyde and the conviction of his murderers. The SCR has now concluded that the murder could not have been predicted nor prevented – but has exposed multiple failings.
Mental Capacity Act knowledge gap: The SCR also exposed a knowledge gap regarding the Mental Capacity Act 2005 among children’s services staff. Hyde never received a mental capacity assessment and there was an “across-the-board” assumption among agencies that he possessed capacity to make all relevant decisions.This was despite the fact that he used alcohol or cannabis, potentially affecting the functioning of his brain or mind, and made a number of decisions that made him vulnerable to abuse or harm. These included rejecting housing tenancies after seeking accommodation, ignoring advice from his GP to access counselling and offending behaviour.
The Mental Capacity Act 2005 states that professionals should presume that people possess capacity to make decisions and not treat unwise decisions as evidence of a lack of capacity.However, the SCR concluded that it was “questionable” whether agencies’ assumption of capacity was reasonable, adding: “The presumption of capacity does not exempt authorities and services from undertaking robust assessments where a person’s apparent decision is manifestly contrary to his wellbeing.”
For full details and analysis, see Community Care online.