Lasting Power of Attorney Research
What is the Office of the Public Guardian and Lasting Power of Attorney?
The Office of the Public Guardian helps people in England and Wales to stay in control of decisions about their health and finance and make important decisions for others who cannot decide for themselves.
A lasting power of attorney is a legal document that lets you (the ‘donor’) appoint one or more people (known as ‘attorneys’) to help you make decisions or to make decisions on your behalf.
This gives you more control over what happens to you if you have an accident or an illness and cannot make your own decisions (you ‘lack mental capacity’).
There are two types of LPA:
• health and welfare
• property and financial affairs
More information
You can find out more about making an LPA for yourself or someone else here
Looking for LPA Attorneys and Donors to support this project
Attorneys and donors should be able to use this online service instead of showing the paper LPA to organisations or posting it to them.
Healthwatch Hertfordshire are supporting the Office of the Public Guardian with this project by recruiting people to take part in the research for this new service and to help test it.
Healthwatch would like to hear from you if:
1) you have an LPA in your name (you’re the ‘donor’ on an LPA)
2) you are named as an ‘attorney’ on an LPA
3) you are thinking about making an LPA for yourself or helping someone else to make one, but haven’t done it yet
Project Update
Lasting Power of Attorney - Online Testing Event
In October 2019 we worked with the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) to test out a new way for attorneys and donors to give organisations, such as hospitals, care homes and banks, access to view an online summary of a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA).
Attorneys and donors should be able to use this online service instead of showing the paper LPA to organisations or posting it to them, which can be a lengthy and complicated process.
We recruited a small group of volunteers, some of whom already had an LPA in place and some who did not. Two members of staff from Age Uk Hertfordshire who lead on this area of work for their organisation also joined the group.
Over three hourly sessions, volunteers were able to:
- go through the process of proving an LPA to an organisation online as if for real
- test how easy it was and
- make suggestions about what could be improved in either the initial letter of LPA confirmation or about the system itself.
Some of the volunteers also agreed to continue to the next phase of testing with the OPG researchers.
The new online system for LPAs went live in 2020
You can find out more about the 'Use a Lasting Power of Attorney' Service online but visiting the Government's website here
