Our ordinary story ….and how it became an unbelievable family experience of the Court of Protection

By Amanda Hill, 9 April 2025

(Amanda previously wrote a blog about her experience in March 2023. She had to write that under a pseudonym, Anna. This is what she wrote at the time: https://openjusticecourtofprotection.org/2023/03/17/deprived-of-her-liberty-my-experience-of-the-court-procedure-for-my-mum/)

Last weekend I read through the 300-page court bundle of documents associated with my mum’s Court of Protection (COP) case for the very first time in its entirety.

At the hearing in June 2022, I’d been a Litigant in Person (meaning I represented myself and didn’t have a lawyer) – but at that point I’d only read the principal documents such as witness statements and position statements. And after the hearing I just wanted to forget about it. In any case, I don’t think I would have understood a lot of it then. Nearly three years on, I have learned so much more, although recent events have led me to realise that there is still so much more to learn.

Reading the full bundle has helped me to piece together more about why we became involved in a COP case, which I have never fully understood. Why us? But the jigsaw is coming together. And I was shocked and upset by what I discovered. Reading the bundle brought all the emotions back, not least reading Mum’s words and realising the impact of her dementia, then and now.

I could write pages but I will pare it down to the minimum for now. Because I am still subject to some reporting restrictions (and my three siblings are still subject to all the standard reporting restrictions), I will use random initials and no identifying information.

I’m sharing this not to blame anyone but to hope that there is learning from it, and to give a voice to other families who can’t speak out about their experiences of similar situations. And of course anybody, at any time, could become a family member of a protected party (‘P’) in a Court of Protection case.

Here’s the story:

1. In 2013 Mum shows the first signs of forgetfulness. Me and my siblings (I have two sisters and a brother) all agree that Mum should appoint us with Lasting Powers of Attorney (for Finance and Property and for Health and Welfare) so that we could make decisions for her if, in the future, she’s not able to make her own decisions. For practical reasons, we all agree that my sister MC and her husband HC will do it. They are both qualified accountants (as am I, the replacement LPA). Mum willingly agreed to it, once I had explained to her about it. It was done after a visit to a solicitor, attended by me and Mum.
2. In 2016 Mum is formally diagnosed with dementia.
3. For many years, MC devotes a significant portion of her life to caring for both Mum and Dad, at the same time as having her own school age children and working. A typical ‘sandwich” carer. This includes sorting out a care package of four visits a day for Dad (after he suffered a stroke) at the home he and Mum share.
4. Dad dies in 2019. The family agree that Mum needs her own care package and MC sorts all this out. Mum has three and eventually four visits a day from carers. During the covid pandemic lockdowns, MC organises everything for Mum, including all her shopping. She takes over Mum’s finances in order to pay the bills as Mum can no longer manage. She always keeps the rest of us informed about everything.
5. MC spends more and more time caring for Mum, on top of the care visits by professionals. It’s difficult, as Mum doesn’t think she needs any care and doesn’t accept she has dementia. She resents MC and the professionals interfering with her life. She says she can look after herself. She says she just wants to be left alone.
6. Over time, all four of her children become increasingly concerned about her wellbeing, both mental and physical, especially the risk of her setting fire to the house because of her smoking habits. MC and I contact social services for additional support as we are so worried. There are a couple of visits, but they say that they can’t do anything more.
7. In 2021 the problems escalate and a new social worker gets involved and responds to our plea for support. Crisis point is reached and we all agree, us four children and the social worker, that the point had finally been reached that Mum should move to a care home providing specialist dementia care. It is July 2021.
8. As MC and her husband hold LPAs for Health and Welfare, we assume that they can make that decision. After all, we thought that was the point of having one in place:

_{‘A health and welfare LPA gives your attorney the power to make decisions about your daily routine (washing, dressing, eating), medical care, moving into a care home and life-sustaining medical treatment. It can only be used if you’re unable to make your own decisions.’}

^{(From the NHS UK website: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/social-care-and-support-guide/making-decisions-for-someone-else/giving-someone-power-of-attorney/)}

9. The family decide that my brother would take Mum to the care home as we know my Mum will blame MC. She blames her for everything, in spite of all that MC does for her.  Mum settles in pretty well. She is vocal about not wanting to be there, though, when anybody asks.

10. We think Mum will be there for good, as we can’t see any way that she’d be able to leave to live independently again. We agree to sell the family home, to pay for the care home fees and to pay off the equity release debt, which we understand has to be paid back when a person moves into full time care. So mum is a self-funder.

11. Although the social worker explains that it would have to be initially respite care, we assume it will be a formality to transfer that to permanent care. We have never heard of Deprivation of Liberty. We start hearing inklings, although nobody ever really explains it to us. ‘Court’ is mentioned. We don’t know what court. We try and find out more from friends who might know.  They say ‘Oh, it won’t get that far’. Including a friend of mine who is a GP.

12. Nobody tells any of us, including MC, that a paid Relevant Person’s Representative (RPR) is appointed to represent Mum. This is because we all agreed that Mum should move into the care home and we are therefore deemed not to be able to represent her,  since Mum’s expressed wish is to leave the care home. (I only learned this very recently).

13. The RPR never speaks to MC, HC, or us three other children.

14. Mum continues to say, when asked, that she doesn’t want to be there. But she doesn’t display any behaviour of trying to leave. And when I take her out into the community, she willingly returns to the care home.

15. Reading through the court documents, Mum says a lot of things when speaking to professionals. Included among the things mum is reported as saying are:

1. I am 200 years old
2. The Queen visited my mother
3. The decorator in the home is from my home town
4. My daughter has put me in a home because she is after the money from my house.
5. I led hundreds of children over the mountains to save them from the Japanese (in the second world war).

I read about these in the court bundle. But they don’t surprise me as Mum still frequently says them, plus a lot more. None of them are true.

16. The RPR decides that, based on speaking to Mum, Mum is happy for a judge to decide where she should live. She first contacts a solicitor in November 2021, after meeting Mum remotely (because of Covid restrictions). Family are not consulted at all. Mum tells other people, including the social worker, that she doesn’t want to go to court.

17. Mum tells me and MC to watch out as “they” are out to get us.

18. The Official Solicitor is appointed and the court application is prepared and sent in. Reading the bundle this weekend, I have confirmation of what I had always suspected. It is clear from the documentation that somebody, somewhere, believed that Mum was speaking the truth when she said that MC was after the money from her house. The Statement of Facts, a document sent in with the court application, only mentions MC. None of us other siblings are mentioned in that document. The implication is that MC is an only child. I’m not sure who prepared the Statement of Facts. Paragraph 5 of that document is damning. It focuses on the sale of the house. In my opinion, anyone reading that paragraph will believe that the house sale is suspicious. The two A4 pages of Statement of Facts is compiled from pages and pages of documentation that many people would read and come to a different conclusion.

19. MC receives a letter in April 2022 saying ‘Ms X’ (Mum, who has always been ‘Mrs’) has applied to the COP, and with some forms for MC to fill in ‘only if you wish to participate in proceedings’.

20. On receiving the letter, MC phones the solicitor to ask if she can send the form to her sister (me). The solicitor she speaks to replies ‘But you’re an only child’. MC replies ‘No, I have a sister in France’. The solicitor replies ‘No, you’re an only child’. MC says ‘No, I have three siblings”. At which point the solicitor says she will call MC back. MC then receives a call from a more senior solicitor.  The senior solicitor says that only MC is named on the DoLS form(s?), and that is why the rest of the family were not contacted as interested people. This is repeated in the court documents in the bundle.  On reading the reams of pages used to prepare the Statement of Facts, it is clear that Mum has four children. Even the RPR refers in the documentation to Mum’s children. The other person holding LPA for Mum, my sister’s husband, HC, is never mentioned by name in the documentation, only briefly as MC’s husband.

21. I send an email myself to the solicitors to try to find out more.  But MC is told that as her siblings are not included in the application to the CoP, they cannot speak or communicate with anyone except through MC.

22. I want to learn more about the COP and search on the internet to find out more. I come across the Open Justice Court of Protection Project by chance. I start observing COP cases and with the support of Celia Kitzinger I ask to become a Litigant in Person (a party), so that the family can have a voice in the hearing. And so that we (as people who have known her all our lives) can try to make sure that Mum’s voice is heard.

23. MC and I attend the remote hearing held in June 2022. During the hearing, I am joined as a party by the judge, as requested. This means I receive all paperwork including the bundle. We ask the court’s permission to talk to our siblings about the hearing, which is given.

24. There are two subsequent round table meetings (lawyers, MC and me, Social Worker, care home staff) and everyone agrees that it’s in Mum’s best interests to remain living where she is. The court order includes certain things to reduce the restrictions on Mum, such as ensuring access to the community by going to the hairdresser. The hairdresser is a longstanding friend to Mum, and like another daughter to her. It was the one place she regularly went to, up until the very end of her life at home – taken by MC once a week on a Friday.

25. The final hearing in December 2022 is vacated (it doesn’t go ahead) because there is an agreed order. We are very happy with the outcome and it is all resolved amicably.

26. Life goes on. Family take Mum to the hairdresser as regularly as possible. MC continues to do most of the liaising with the care home, carries on paying the bills, buying clothes for Mum, and taking any phone calls from professionals. Etc Etc. All of us visit Mum regularly. My other sister visits often, and takes Mum’s greatgrandchildren when she goes, and they take Mum out. My brother also goes to visit regularly. We all are in agreement about everything to do with Mum’s care and where she lives. We are all very happy with the care home and how Mum is being looked after.

27. Mum has made friends. There is continuity of staff, who know her very well, and can cope with the ups and downs of her behaviour caused by the dementia. She says one of the carers in particular is like a son. I have the utmost admiration for them. Caring for people with dementia is so difficult on the whole, although I’m sure it has its rewards too. The care home activities team are wonderful.

28. Mum is now 91 and very frail. She has severe dementia but thankfully still recognises us. And depending on her mood, she still blames MC for where she is. But not the rest of us children. She at other times says how much she loves MC and how she has been badly treated. It depends on her mood. She remembers nothing about the court case and didn’t understand it at the time either.

29. Mum still gets distressed by people asking her official questions, as was the case at the time of the COP proceedings She still just wants to be left alone. As the court documents state she said, and as we know from knowing her all our lives, the most important things to her are her family and her faith.

30. MC receives a phone call annually about the DoLS assessment. It is a different person every year. In 2023, the Best Interests Assessor asked her if she knew Mum had been involved in a court case. Last week the new Independent BIA said that Mum was in a good mood. She also mentioned that “K” continued to visit Mum once a month.

31. This comes as a shock. We have no idea somebody is visiting Mum once a month. Nobody has ever told us.

32. When I contact the care home, they say they assumed we knew as it was ‘something to do with the court case’.

33. I want to find out who ‘K’ is and why she is visiting. And why nobody has spoken to the family about her. And why she has never spoken to MC. There is no information on the annual DoLS form and nothing in the court order about continuing visits from anybody. Nobody is named as RPR on the form.

34. I ask myself: Is this usual? Is this what should happen? And where does the official function of an LPA fit in? Has anyone recently determined that this visit by a stranger once a month is in Mum’s best interests? Especially as we know, and the court documents show, that Mum gets distressed when asked questions by officials.

35. I email the DoLS team. The Independent Best Interests Assessor comes back to me very quickly, thankfully. It seems that ‘K’ is a paid RPR.  She doesn’t visit Mum monthly, but “regularly”. She says that family can take on this role. I enquire more and the DoLS team say it doesn’t cost Mum or the family anything as the Local Authority pay for it. They suggest that MC takes on the role but I want to do it. MC has dealt with so much and I know more about the role.

36. The Independent BIA confirms that I can take on this role and the paid RPR won’t be needed any more. I am delighted by this and am grateful to the DoLS team, and Independent Best Interests Assessor, for their reactivity. But disappointed that maybe I could have been doing this ever since the court case.

37. The original RPR is no longer involved. I don’t know when she stopped being involved.

And that is, currently, the end of the story.

Professionals come and go but, for the vast majority of the time, family are constant. The vast majority of families want to do the best for their loved ones and spend many hours caring for them. In my opinion, safeguarding training creates an overly suspicious attitude towards families. And once a label or suspicion is attached, it’s hard to shake off.

There have been many positive consequences for me. It has brought us as a family closer together. I have found new purpose in life. I am passionate about open justice. I also want to shine a light on what going through COP proceedings can be like for families. That’s why I’m doing a PhD which focusses on this. I hope by shining a light, it will help families, many of whom are prevented from speaking out themselves by ongoing reporting restrictions.

I hope the professionals will understand more about what it is like for families. In an ideal world we all need to work together collaboratively for the best interests of ‘P’.

There have been such negative consequences – emotionally, reputationally (especially for my sister MC), medically (the young social worker who supported us ended up going on long-term sick leave, and I’m convinced this was at least a partial consequence of our case, as it was the first time she had been involved in COP proceedings).  And financially. What a huge cost to the taxpayer. Could there not be a way of avoiding going to court in this sort of situation? And the ongoing role of paid RPRs seems to be little understood.

Finally, I am writing this blog especially for my sister MC. So that all that she has done for Mum is publicised. So that she can be seen for the generous, kind and caring person she is, rather than as a suspect family member. She can’t speak about it so I want to. I hope one day soon she can.

Amanda Hill is a PhD student at the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University. Her research focuses on the Court of Protection, exploring family experiences, media representations and social media activism. She is a core team member of OJCOP. She is also a daughter of a P in a Court of Protection case and has been a Litigant in Person. She is on LinkedIn (here), and also on X as (@AmandaAPHill) and on Bluesky (@AmandaAPHill.bsky.social).