The abuse of the provisions relating to the "capacity to instruct" a solicitor continues in the Family Division. It appears now that this is a special trick used by some social workers and legal departments to prevent people from fighting the system.
Why are babies born young? This sounds like an odd question. People would say "of course babies are born young". However, this goes to the core of the question of human (or animal) development. Why is it that as time passes people develop initially through puberty and then for women through menopause and more generally getting diseases such as sarcopenia, osteoporosis, diabetes and cancer, but most of the time babies start showing no signs of this. Lots of research into this has happened over the years and now I think it is clear why this is. It raises some interesting questions. Biological youth is about how well a cell functions. Cells that are old in a biological sense don't work that well. One of the ways in which cells stop working is they fail to produce the full range of proteins. Generally the proteins that are produced from longer genes stop being produced. The reason for this relates to how the Genes work (the Genome). Because the genome is not gettin...
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Jacquig
I have seen first hand at least two people who are supposedly “incapacitated” yet they know exactly what the case is about & talk about the case with great insight, therefore can obviously instruct a solicitor, it really is not up to a psychologist to say otherwise “opinion” can’t trump “reality”, in fact in one of these cases the GP actually could not believe his patient had an official solicitor when she asked for a referral to a new psychologist & the GP wrote a letter to the court stating at the time this person was said to be “incapacitated”, I saw her & she was fully functioning & knew what the case was about
“Lawyers have no professional choice when someone does not seem to have the competence to instruct. The client has to be assessed by a Psychiatrist - though sometimes a GP is accepted. ”
There is a question as to why anyone’s solicitor would want to undermine their client, the answer is simple “conflict of interest” many solicitors do work for both parents & local authorities, besides local authorities create custom for the solicitor even if they are representing the parent(s) at the said time, both the people I'm aware of in fact live in the same area, have the same solicitor, same social worker, same support worker & both claim & are quite clearly capable, I find that a bit odd to say the least.
“It is right to say that if someone is deemed incompetent they are likely to lose the case - if too incapacitated to instruct the parent is unlikely to be able to parent. And most of the time if parents are at that level they really cannot safely parent unless they are properly supported”
You make a great point & this is exactly what I suspected, parents who are considered “incapable to instruct a solicitor” will get no legal representation because they are considered by default to be too incapable to parent, this is why the official solicitor route is getting more & more popular between professionals, after all the parents are bound to fight back, but tell an Official Solicitor that the person is “incapable” & provided the certificate & you have won without any hassle & the parent is overridden regardless of their objections, after all they are just “incapable”.
I would really like to know the official figures of how many children the Official Solicitor does get back from the state, I suspect it would be an handful at best, at worse zero.
One of the things that could be looked at more carefully is the test which is used by Psychiatrists to determine whether someone is not competent to give instructions. It would also be useful to have some more guidelines for lawyers on what to do if someone is 'incompetent'. I will do a post on my own blog - bloody relations.
jacquig
There are lawyers that use advocates to assist parents who really do have learning difficulties - avoiding a "next friend". However, there are too many con tricks in this part of procedure.