Trends in the use of welfare guardianship
During the past year we have seen an increase of 11.5% in the number of approved welfare guardianship applications. While approved orders are not increasing at the levels evidenced several years ago, they do continue to rise and appear to have levelled out at increases of between 9-13% over the past three years. This still represents a growth of over 27% in new orders in the past three years - mostly accounted for by the rise in private applications which have increased by 45% during this period.Clearly this rate of growth in private applications will be placing additional demands on statutory services both at the application stage as well as in the supervisory responsibilities which follow. While the percentage of local authority applications fell from 36% to 32% in the past year, the numbers have remained relatively static over the past three years (417,435 and 423).
Annual reports
- Director's introduction
- overview of the Mental Health (Care & Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003
- new orders granted in 2009-2010
- total numbers of 2003 Act orders in existence
- monitoring our priority areas
- additional findings from our monitoring of mental health law
- our overview of the use of the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000
- our overview of the use of Adults With Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000
trends in the use of welfare guardianship
- geographical variations in the use of welfare guardianship
- causes of incapacity in guardianship
- age of adults at point of welfare guardianship order approval
- consent to medical treatment (part 5 AWI)
- our scrutiny of approved welfare guardianship
- proposals for legislative change