Service User Perspectives: Asking informed questions to build a relationship with a service user
Learning Objectives
After considering this resource, you should understand how communication skills can enhance the usefulness of the information gathered and help build trust with a service user.
Good mental capacity assessments are a conversation between a service user and the assessor.
In this video we meet Ada, who has been diagnosed with dementia and lives in her own flat. Ada’s daughter visits weekly and has significant concerns over her mother’s ability to live alone. Ada often refuses the twice-weekly carers provided by social services, whose role it is to help with personal care and cooking. Additionally, Ada’s GP has noticed that Ada is losing weight. As a result of these and other concerns, it has been arranged for a doctor to visit, to assess whether Ada has the capacity to decide where she lives. He is also exploring whether Ada might benefit from other help which might enable her to live at home, which is her preference. Ada is played by an actress. This is an extract of what would be a much longer process.
For more information and to view further films from the Social Care Institute for Excellence, visit www.scie.org.uk/socialcaretv.
Reflective Questions
- If you were the doctor, what decisions would you make on the basis of this assessment?
- Who do you think the doctor would have spoken to as preparation for meeting Ada? What information has he gathered beforehand that helps him in the course of this assessment?
- Just because Ada doesn’t want to answer the questions being asked of her does it mean she lacks the capacity to? What other issues could be at play here?
- Is there any further support that could be offered to Ada to enable her to keep living in her own home?