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Cost: Every Astor Law Direct seminar is free.
Venue and timing: All seminars will be held in the Lincoln's Inn Conference Centre, 33 Chancery Lane, London WC2. The entrance is in Rolls Passage EC4, just to the left. Nearest tubes are Chancery Lane (3-minute walk), Holborn (5-minute walk) or Temple (10-minute walk). We will start and finish punctually.
Registration: Confirmed registration is required for each attendee. To register, please follow the directions on the contact page. If there is room, we will promptly confirm your registration by email. Places at each seminar are limited, so please register in good time. Registration for all seminars is now open.
Cancellation and substitution: Please cancel by email. Substitutions are freely permitted: just email us the substituter and substitutee.
Materials: Materials for each seminar, if any (usually PDFs and PowerPoints), will be supplied to every registered attendee either by email or on CD-ROM. Hardcopy material will not be provided.
Special needs: Please let us know in good time of any special needs, including (where food will be supplied) dietary. Thank you.
Changes: We may have to change the content and date of particular seminars. Any changes will be posted on this page and emailed to each confirmed registrant.
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Elder Abuse by Essential Carers: Law and Practice
February 8, 2006, 11am - 1pm
For healthcare lawyers, healthcare practitioners, social services and law enforcement officials, carers, policy advisers, old people organisations, and concerned family and friends
Speakers include experts from a number of relevant disciplines including:-
• Keith Lock, the Official Solicitor
• Professor Robert Howard, Professor of Old Age Psychiatry and Psychopathology, Institute of Psychiatry, London
Summary: This workshop addresses gross and subtle emotional, property and other abuse of frail, vulnerable, mentally competent elders by their own carers.
Carer abuse -- especially by the caree's own family -- especially a melted-down, burnt-out spouse or dysfunctional offspring -- is one of the oldest and most fundamental of elder-care problems. Incredibly, there appears to be no broad coordinated body of reported experience on how to deal with it, and no law expressly directed to preventing it, or empowering or protecting those determined to stop it. Indeed, present law and practice positively protect the abusive carer. English even lacks a single word to describe a concerned third party.
Elder abuse by family may already be widespread and will become more so. Tackling it presently requires a fully modelled, fully integrated and coordinated attack by genuine experts from a surprisingly wide range of different and diffuse disciplines -- generally impractical and unaffordable.
The workshop will multidisciplinarily address predicting, pre-empting, unmasking, preventing and remedying such abuse, and explore gaps in relevant law and practice and better, quicker, cheaper remedial techniques. It will particularly look at:-
• why abuse in the first place: carer mental, intellectual and physical states; how the manipulative, plausible carer camouflages and displaces abuse and mental instability; therapy and respite for the carer
• elaborations of abuse: how the carer gets locked into patterns of abuse; keeping up abuse appearances; how the abusing carer manipulates third parties such as GPs, local council and the police; collusion, complicity and alliances; the collusive 'family' solicitor
• coming to terms with abuse: how the trapped, manipulative caree becomes reconciled to it and colludes in it
• how GPs and local councils fail to spot it and fail to react fully responsively when they do spot it: specific incompetence, neglect and collusion syndromes; the 'next of kin' scam
• how present law and police practice positively protect abusers: how the abuser and allies use Protection from Harassment Act 1997 to chill proactivity by concerneds; police policy and practice; civil actions against the police; pre-emptive and protective declarations and injunctions
• how the proactity of concerneds feeds psychopathology, and risks increasing abuse
• practical problem: who will care for the caree while the carer is away being psychologically assessed
Specific content: Law and practice to be addressed include:-
(1) professional abuse: GP negligence, physician/surgeon negligence, hospital negligence, social services negligence, lawyer negligence, financial adviser negligence; law enforcement negligence and illegality; residential home abuse; professional collusion with the abusive carer; general cultural neglect of the elderly; the genuinely concerned and competent GP and local authority -- a myth?
(2) domestic abuse: abuse by carers, spouses, offspring; the frail vulnerable mentally competent geriatric at the mercy of carers, spouse and offspring; well camouflaged dysfunction; penetrating appearances to assess the true nature and quality of care; psychological problems in carers and their allies; carer fatigue; carer and ally dishonesty and manipulation; legal irrelevance of good faith and good intentions
(3) Protection from Harassment Act 1997: the Act not intended to be used to chill reasonable, lawful, justified and necessary persistence by concerneds; complaints against concerneds by the dysfunctional carer and allies; the compliant beat officer and his 'yellow card' (Harassment Warning Form); police responsibilities, duties and obligations; concerneds' rights and remedies against the police; injunctions; declarations; damages issues; preemption and protection; complaints against the police; police records; police practice and training documentation
(4) accessing and recording abuse: ways to collect and preserve admissible evidence; ensuring full access to all relevant undisturbed sources; overcoming carer confidentiality and privacy; the documentary trail; attempts by the carer to block sources and avenues of inquiry; eliciting the truth from the vulnerable caree; ascertaining and executing the caree's own wishes; identifying and reversing undue influence; power of attorney; enduring power of attorney; the unregistered EPA; Court of Protection register alerts
(5) whose rights and remedies?: 'close relative' and friend standing, functions, rights and responsibilities; dealing with bogus complaints of harassment; civil liability of the carer and police; concerned's standing to:-
• access and supervise the carer and caree
• access, alert, press, monitor and quality-control the GP, local authority, carer supply agencies, other supposed sources of help
• formally complain about the GP and local authority; complaints about police handling of harassment allegations
• apply to the court for relevant remedies
(6) the court route:-
• pre-court options (mediation; professional conduct complaints etc.)
• which court? Family Division, Chancery Division, Court of Protection, County Court, others
• standing to apply to a court: the mentally competent and incompetent caree; where the abusive carer suppresses the abused caree's ability to exercise mental competence; local authority; concerneds; exposure to costs; quantifying costs
• court jurisdiction: each court's express and inherent jurisdiction
• remedies: declarations; injunctions; restraining orders; witness summons; property and evidence preservation and restoration; best interests orders; mental health remedies; overt and covert sectioning
• conduct of litigation by the mental competent but abused and physically ineffectual old person; Court of Protection; Official Solicitor; guardians and receivers
• new remedies under Mental Capacity Act 2005
(7) new thinking:-
• taking pressure off the carer: a carer support order; other techniques to avoid exposing the caree to increased abuse
• tackling the dysfunction comprehensively and imposing a solution: a dysfunctional family best interests order; financial provisions
• empowering and protecting concerneds: ways forward for proactive concerned family and friends determined to stop the abuse and impose rational, logical thinking
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Cultural Heritage: Depatriation and Repatriation Issues
DATE TO BE ANNOUNCED
For those interested in legal aspects of cultural heritage depatriation and repatriation.
It is increasingly fashionable for governments, indigenous peoples and legal owners to seek the return of depatriated movable cultural heritage objects: examples include the Parthenon Marbles (Greece), the Rosetta Stone (Egypt), Aboriginal human remains, Native North American property, and Jewish Holocaust property. RJA predicts that this trend will increase exponentially. This seminar discusses relevant depatriation and repatriation legal issues neutrally and objectively.
Seminar key topics include:-
• relevant public international law; UNESCO and UNIDROIT conventions; survey of treaties and conventions in force; which countries have and have not signed up; the effect and practical operation of particular international law; legal relevance and effect of resolutions, decisions and other emanations of international bodies (Council of Europe, European Parliament, UN General Assembly, UNESCO, etc.); how long to give politics and diplomacy in a particular case
• relevant municipal law including criminal law; retroactive customised criminal law; private law rights and remedies; search and seizure; impounding and confiscation; injunctive relief; export licences; buy-out offers; safe custody, preservation, conservation and maintenance
• restitution: legal issues: legal aspects of depatriation and provenance; proving good title; legal arguments for and against restitution; legal content of restitution agreements; political, diplomatic, cultural and commercial issues. Particular items considered include human remains, art works, land, money and monetary instruments
• compensation in lieu of / in addition to restitution: legal issues: relevant municipal law in the first place; quantum; relevant sources of funds; legal content of compensation agreements.
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