The number of Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) referrals hit a new high in 2023-24 but practitioners managed to cut backlogs, official figures have shown.
Care homes and hospitals made 332,455 applications to deprive a person of liberty for their own protection last year, up 11% on the figure for 2022-23, according to NHS England’s annual DoLS data.
Reduction in DoLS backlogs and timeframes
However, despite this, council DoLS practitioners managed to curb both case backlogs and timeframes on the back of a 12% rise in the number of applications they processed during 2023-24, to a record 323,870.
While the average duration of cases remained well above the 21-day statutory timeframe for standard DoLS applications, it fell from 156 to 144 days from 2022-23 to 2023-24.
And the number of uncompleted applications at 31 March 2024 fell by 2% year on year, from 126,100 to 123,790.
About the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards
- DoLS provides a statutory procedure in England and Wales for authorising the deprivation of liberty of people for care or treatment, as required under Article 5 of the European Convention of Human Rights.
- Care homes or hospitals (‘managing authorities)’ must apply to councils or Welsh health boards (‘supervisory bodies’) to authorise a prospective or existing deprivation.
- Supervisory bodies must then assess whether the six qualifying requirements are met: that the person is 18 or over, has a mental health condition and lacks capacity to consent to the deprivation; that the deprivation does not conflict with requirements of the Mental Health Act 1983, a prior advanced decision by the person or the decision of a Court of Protection-appointed deputy or a donee of lasting power of attorney; and that being deprived of their liberty is in their best interests, necessary to protect the person from harm and a proportionate response to the severity or likelihood of that harm.
- The last of those checks is carried out by a best interests assessor, who is typically a social worker and generally co-ordinates the assessment process.
- Where the qualifying requirements are met, the supervisory body grants the managing authority a ‘standard authorisation’ to deprive the person of their liberty for a maximum of 12 months.
- The DoLS process must be completed within 21 days, other than when the managing authority has granted itself an ‘urgent authorisation’ to deprive the person of their liberty, in which case it should take seven days.
The figures showed that DoLS practitioners processed more than three times as many cases in 2023-24 compared with 2015-16 (105,055), during which time the number of referrals less than doubled.
As has been the case since 2019-20, more completed applications were not granted in 2023-24 (181,940) than granted (141,925).
Uncompleted assessments
However, for the first time, the data demonstrated that, in the vast majority of cases where an authorisation was not granted, the application was closed without an assessment being started (162,655) or completed (15,270). Where an assessment was completed – in 145,945 cases – 97% resulted in a DoLS authorisation.
In cases that were closed without an assessment being carried out, this was likely to be because the person’s circumstances had changed or they had died before the process could be started.
Unsurprisingly, these cases were concentrated in acute hospitals, where DoLS authorisations are required relatively briefly during a treatment episode.
Of 100,550 applications made by acute hospitals in 2022-23, just 4,645 resulted in a completed assessment.
Under the Court of Appeal’s judgment in R (Ferreira) v HM Senior Coroner for Inner South London [2017], there is no requirement for a DoLS authorisation in cases where a person is receiving life-saving treatment that did not differ from what would be given to a person without a mental health problem.
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole 
Hampshire County Council 
Lincolnshire County Council 
Norfolk County Council 
Northamptonshire Children’s Trust 
South Gloucestershire Council 
Wiltshire Council 
Wokingham Borough Council 
Children and young people with SEND are ‘valued and prioritised’ in Wiltshire, find inspectors 
How specialist refugee teams benefit young people and social workers 
Podcast: returning to social work after becoming a first-time parent 
Podcast: would you work for an inadequate-rated service? 
Family help: one local authority’s experience of the model 
‘We are all one big family’: how one council has built a culture of support 
Workforce Insights – showcasing a selection of the sector’s top recruiters 
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
Instagram
My father hadn’t been taking medication, wasn’t eating and looked unkept this is only a small snippet there is lots more. The SW said dad was able to make his own decisions and he really wasn’t so left him and he died where he should have been placed where he would be looked after he wasn’t able to make decisions to safeguard himself.