.png)
Retrospective Mental Capacity Assessment
If someone has made a decision and their is now doubt about their mental capacity a retrospective capacity assessment report is a valuable tool to ensure individuals rights are safeguarded.
Retrospective Mental Capacity Assessments are our speciality, we apply a critical independent and analytical eye to all of the relevant information to ensure our court procedure compliant reports are evidenced based.
What is retrospective capacity?
When an individual’s decision-making is contested on the grounds they lacked capacity at the time of making a decision, we can provide a retrospective assessment to identify their capacity. This can include a mental capacity assessment of the individual, reviewing medical records, and discussions with family, friends and professionals.
Your Questions Answered
-
What can I expect from my retrospective capacity assessment
By completing different interviews and assessments, we can carry out a thorough investigation and ascertain the probability of the individual having the capacity for a specific decision at a specific time. Retrospective assessments can be completed pre and post-mortem for a range of specific decisions.
-
What's Included in the assessment?
Depending on the situation, a retrospective capacity assessment can include:
-
A transaction specific Family and Friends Interview
-
A review of medical records
-
A Mental Capacity Assessment in line with the Mental Capacity Act (2005) and relevant case law
-
Why Choose Nellie?
We have worked with official court solicitors to create a bespoke assessment report to assess and record the mental capacity of an adult to engage in court proceedings in the Family Court, the High Court, a county court, or the Court of Appeal.
-
Who can complete a mental capacity assessment?
In cases involving complex or major decisions, you may need to get a professional opinion. The assessor must be an impartial, qualified professional, such as a doctor, nurse, or social worker.
-
Can we complete video-link or face to face assessments?
We can visit you in your own home or any other suitable space you feel most comfortable and at a time of your choosing. In those instances where face-to-face assessments aren't viable, we offer a fully secure video-link assessment service.
Accreditations
Social Work England is a specialist body taking a new approach to regulating social workers in their vital roles. All of our Social Workers are registered with Social Work England for your peace of mind.
Our assessors are accredited Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) assessors with specific experience in completing capacity assessments and specialist reports.
All of our assessors have undergone extra training to become accredited financial vulnerability experts according to Lichtenberg standards, so they can provide even more detailed reports on mental capacity.
CASE STUDY
Kate's mother and father had divorced late on in life in their 70s after a 35-year marriage, and Kates's father, Daniel, remarried 18 months after the divorce had finalised.
Sadly Kate's father passed away following a short illness just two years after marrying his second wife, Jenny. Kate discovered that Daniel had created a new will, leaving everything, not to Jenny or his children from his first marriage; instead, Daniel had left his entire estate to Jenny's only child Chris.
Kate contacted a solicitor to dispute the will as she believed there had been some undue influence. Kate explained her Dad had, up until his death, he wanted everything to be shared with Kate and her siblings. Before Daniel's passing, he had received a diagnosis of Alzheimer's dementia; while this wasn't enough to evidence a lack of testamentary capacity, it was enough for Kate's solicitor to request a retrospective assessment.
Our team at Nellie Supports scoured through thousands of medical and social care records identifying the evidence surrounding Daniel's capacity at the time he made the new will; we then completed interviews with family and friends to understand Daniel's decision-making at that time and to build up a picture of how his dementia was affecting his day to day life.
With this information, we created a report with a hypothesis that Daniel did have sufficient mental capacity and a null hypothesis that Daniel lacked sufficient capacity; this way, we created a balanced, unbiased and evidence-based assessment.
The outcome was that the evidence we had gained showed that on the scale of probability, Daniel lacked capacity at the time as there was evidence Daniel's Alzheimer's disease had progressed rapidly to the point of him being unable to recognise family and friends. With our report, Kate and her legal team were able to argue to have the new ill overturned and for Daniels estate to be administered in line with his original will.
