Mental Capacity and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards in Health and Social Care

Working in a health and social care setting means looking after or supporting individuals who sometimes need extra help. When in this setting it is important to understand the mental capacity of the individuals in your care, often carried out through assessment, as this will help tailor their support. There are various reasons to why someone may lack mental capacity, and in the cases where this is lacking, Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) looks to protect the person to ensure their liberty is not being deprived in their care arrangements.

This short course looks to explore the topic of Mental Capacity and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards, with focus on legal frameworks, policies and guidelines to provide learners with a strong foundation of knowledge.

This 30-minute course can be used as an introduction or as refresher training to ensure that all learners have up to date knowledge of Mental Capacity and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards.

Learning Outcomes for this course include:

• Outline relevant legal frameworks, policy and guidelines
• Explain the meaning of mental capacity in relation to how care is provided

Accreditation

The content of this course has been independently certified as conforming to universally accepted Continuous Professional Development (CPD) guidelines.

Certification

At the beginning of each module learners will be asked to answer a “knowledge check” question. Answering the question correctly will allow learners the opportunity to skip this section. However, if they wish to complete it anyway, they are still able to.

On completion of this course, learners will be able to print a Virtual College certificate. Learners must complete the course to obtain their certificate.

Duration

30 study minutes to complete. The length of time taken depends entirely on how quickly learners can study and absorb the material.

Target Audience

This training is designed for anyone working in a health and social care environment such as care workers and support workers wanting to get a good understanding of what is required of them within their role as well as for anyone wanting annual refresher training.

Entry Requirements

There are no specific entry requirements for this course.

Framework

Our Mental Capacity and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards in Health and Social Care online training course is mapped to the Skills for Care Core and Mandatory Training Framework. 

Here we explain the framework and its importance. 

Skills for Care Core and Mandatory Training Framework:

The Core and Mandatory Training framework was produced by skills for care in partnership with a panel of social care employers, learning providers and representative organisations and was updated in line with CQC’s revised inspection framework.

It sets out a series of minimum learning objectives and a suggested refresher frequency, to support care organisations to provide their staff with a foundation of learning and refresher opportunities.