ABSTRACT
Deputies who have personal welfare decisions will only be required in the most difficult cases where important and necessary actions cannot be carried out without the court’s authority or there is no other way of settling the matter in the best interests of the person who lacks capacity to make particular welfare decisions. Hedley J also gave guidance in relation to the capacity to make judgments about whether or not a person should see their relatives or the context in which they should do so, which he described as requiring ‘an understanding of quite complex emotional issues.’ Importantly, a person’s capacity to make judgements about whether or not he or she should see their family members, or third parties, needs to be distinguished from their capacity to decide on any individual occasion whether to take up the offer of contact that has been made.
