The Supreme Court's judgment on deprivation of liberty

You may be aware that the Supreme Court has recently issued a judgment which significantly changes the legal approach to determining whether a person is deprived of their liberty. The judgement can be seen here A Reference by the Attorney General for Northern Ireland of a devolution issue under paragraph 34 o….

We would encourage you to familiarise yourselves with the judgment and carefully consider the implications for your services and practice. Please see the following links for further information: CQC statement on the Supreme Court's judgment on deprivation of liberty - Care Quality Commission and 2026-UKSC-16-Summary-for-website.pdf.

We ask that you refer to this updated position when making any new referrals to the DoLS team.  In addition, as the change came into effect immediately from 2 June, please review any recent DoLS referrals you have made. You should consider whether, in light of this revised approach, any of these referrals may no longer be appropriate.

We hope this offers reassurance whilst we wait for additional National guidance to be disseminated.  At this stage we don’t have further information, but if you have a specific query, you can contact the MCA DoLS Duty Team at Dolforms@essex.gov.uk

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Once you have decided upon your SMART aim, you need to give some thought to what changes you could implement to achieve your aim. This would be a good stage to involve staff at your home and a 'Driver Diagram' is a means of structuring your thoughts regarding what needs to be in place in order to achieve your SMART aim.

A good starting point in the process of creating 'Driver Diagrams' is to have a brainstorm session with your staff to decide on the factors that need to be in place to meet your target. Once the brainstorm is complete, all the factors should be grouped into 'Primary Drivers' and 'Secondary Drivers'.

Driver Diagram

A 'Primary Driver' should be an essential factor that needs to be addressed to meet your aim.

A 'Secondary Driver' should be a factor that feeds into a 'Primary Driver' being in place.

For example if your SMART aim is to achieve a 30% reduction in falls by end of 2025, you may decide that to achieve this goal it would be essential to have a clean and tidy, 'clutter free' environment; this would be a 'Primary Driver'. You may then decide that to achieve this you need to reinforce the importance of tidying everything away after use in the communal lounge and regularly checking the condition of flooring around the home, these would be 'Secondary Drivers'.

You may feel many of the 'Secondary Drivers' are already in place but using your list of 'Secondary Drivers' you can decide on the changes you need to implement and test as a Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) cycle.

This may initially sound complicated but give it a go with a group of staff. You may be surprised how quickly the 'Driver Diagram' fills up.

Your PROSPER Support Officer is always willing to support you with this.

Last updated: 10/09/2025
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