Mental Capacity Act 2005, Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards, 2023-24

This publication provides statistics from the Mental Capacity Act 2005, Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards data collection for the most recent financial year. DoLS are a legal framework applying to individuals who lack the mental capacity to consent to the arrangements for their care. Where such care may amount to a "deprivation of liberty" the arrangements are independently assessed to ensure they are in the best interests of the individual concerned, and to give those subjects to a deprivation of liberty the means to challenge this.

This publication covers DoLS applications made to local authorities by care homes and hospitals. Data were provided by 153 Councils with Adult Social Services Responsibility (CASSRs) - for ease of reading and consistency ‘local authority’ will be used subsequently to refer to CASSRs. More information on this can be found in the Data Quality Key Information section. Statistics on challenges to DoLS authorisations are published by the Ministry of Justice

This publication provides analysis of all DoLS applications that were active at any stage during the period, and concentrates on six main areas of DoLS activity:

• the demographic profile of people for whom a DoLS application was submitted, analysing data on the applications received for individuals during the period rather than the total number of applications received.
• applications received during the year, regardless of the status of the application at the end of the period.
• applications completed (i.e. signed off) during the year, regardless of when the application was received.
• applications not completed as at year end.
• analysis of the length of the application process, including compliance with the 21- day standard outlined in the Code of Practice.
• analysis of the duration (proposed and actual) of granted authorisations and the proportion of authorisations that ended early.

The publication consists of:

• tables providing data at local authority level.
• machine readable open data (csv (comma-separated values) files).
• a data quality assessment, including data completeness and integrity measures.
• supporting information.
• the dashboard, an interactive business intelligence tool.

In order to prevent the disclosure of individuals, figures 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4 are displayed as [c] in the data tables, in accordance with Government Statistical Service guidelines on best practice for accessible spreadsheets. All other figures have been rounded to the nearest multiple of 5. Proportions (percentages) are calculated on the unrounded figures.

During the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic period some aspects of the DoLS process changed due to new Government guidance. This includes greater use of remote assessments and shortened forms. These measures ended in August 2021. In addition, Local Authorities have described the additional pressures the pandemic period has placed on them in relation to DoLS, with staffing, redeployment and capacity being common themes, as well as increases in applications. The impact of COVID-19 on DoLS has not explicitly been measured, but these differences may be reflected in historical data contained in previous publications and in the dashboard tool.

Data quality is measured on submission of annual data by local authorities, and processes are followed to try and improve quality of data submitted. The Data Quality Statement gives further information, and presented below is an overview of the key data quality issues impacting on the 2023-24 DoLS data.

Summary measures indicate that the data submitted was valid and complete to a high degree, with the final returns yielding a very high national completeness and validity score (99.96%). The annex tables that accompany this publication also includes some data integrity checks. There are 11 data integrity checks that are carried out across each record in each local authority return, with further support offered from NHS England to resolve. In 2023-24 there were approximately 5,400 data cells (out of 12.9m) with validation breaches.

Missing Data

There has not been any missing data as every local authority submitted data.

Not completed applications

As in previous years, NHS England has used the data available to calculate the estimated volumes of applications not completed at year end. An estimated number of applications not completed can be created by taking last year’s reported number of applications not completed, adding the number of applications received and then subtracting the number of applications completed.

This calculation produces an estimated figure different to the equivalent figure reported by local authorities depending on such circumstances. NHS England has worked with local authorities to try to understand the reasons for this. From the local authorities who provided explanations for their variation in previous years one common theme was that this variation could be explained by the figures from the previous reporting period being higher than they should have been. This was due to several reasons, such as the previous return including applications that should have had a status of Not Granted but the application was still showing as in progress, or data quality issues caused by migrating data from older reporting systems, or through duplicate recording of applications.

Data Quality Chasing

This is a process carried out by NHS England on data quality monitoring of local authorities’ submission throughout the window (time duration on submission) to see which councils need following up with and to check they are actually fixing the issues raised in the DQ report.

Backlog variance

A 'backlog' is where a local authority has DoLS applications that have not been completed by the end of reporting period i.e., applications that have not been fully assessed and signed off. 

Variance in active authorisations

The DoLS data collection should include all applications that were active at any point in the year, during the data validation process, many local authorities resolved this issue.

As a result, 12 local authorities are showing significantly lower numbers of active authorisations on 1 April 2023, the opening date of the 2023-24 collection, compared with the previous day, 31 March 2023, the closing date of 2022-23 collection.

Having these data allows us to accurately measure the actual duration of granted authorisations and also measure the number of authorisations in place throughout the year. NHS England will continue to provide the guidance document and support and encourage all local authorities to review this document each year to ensure they are including the correct records.

Incomplete Actual End Dates

During the data validation process, NHS England identify where the Planned End Date of the authorisation was during the current reporting period however the Actual End Date had been left blank, indicating the unlikely scenario that the authorisation was still in place. For the 2020-21 collection onwards, NHS England embedded this check into the automated data validation tool used by local authorities. This has helped reduce the number of these cases from approximately 3,300 in 2019-20 to 300 this year.

In some cases, local authorities told us this is a deliberate approach to allow ongoing monitoring via case management systems. The issue has the effect of inflating the figure reported in Table 6 in the Time Frames data tables, which is the number of authorisations in place on 31^st March 2024.

Start Date of Authorisation recorded earlier than Application Sign-off Date

There were approximately 7,800 authorisations across 20 local authorities where the Start Date of Authorisation had been recorded earlier than the Application Sign-off Date. Some local authorities provided the explanation that this was an accurate reflection of local practice.

Duration of completed applications

Some local authorities reported cases which were resolved within the duration months. We do not have further contextual information to understand the circumstances of these cases.

General

A significant number of local authorities (66 in total) gave reasonable comments in their data return or validation report to explain errors, changes, or issues with their data.

NHS England would like to thank these local authorities for their transparency. The table below summarises specific key issues explained by local authorities that are not covered by the general comments above.

DoLS data are collated and processed by NHS England from an annual mandatory data collection from all local authorities in England. The collection requires one record per DoLS application with information on; the dates that applications were received and processed, details of the key decisions made and demographic information about the individuals involved. No person identifiable data is collected.

Between April 2009 and March 2013, DoLS applications were processed by both local authorities and Primary Care Trusts (PCTs). Local authorities processed applications from care homes and PCTs processed those from hospitals. During this time, NHS Digital (as was) collected data on a quarterly basis from both local authorities and PCTs in an aggregated form. Following the abolishment of PCTs in 2013, all applications from both health and care settings have been processed by local authorities and the returns are submitted at a case level on a yearly basis. The DoLS collection has remained mandatory for all local authorities.

The collection methodology changed for the 2013-14 DoLS collection onward, following a “zero-based review” of adult social care data collections. The review considered changes in the delivery of social care and looked into what information should be provided to monitor the most important current and future priorities. The key changes introduced were to move to collecting the data annually and at a case level, rather than quarterly and in aggregate. The 2013-14 DoLS collection was developed following consideration of this feedback and was approved by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and other key stakeholder organisations including the Association of the Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS).

The data collection has evolved since then in fairly minor ways, with any changes being signed-off by the appropriate governance boards, which involves a process of approval consisting of the DoLS Working Group (comprising a cohort of local authority DoLS leads and performance leads to advise on the data collection), the Adult Social Care Data Delivery Action Group (a national group overseeing adult social care data collections, publications and the working groups, and which consists of NHS England, ADASS, Local Government Association, Care Quality Commission, Office for National Statistics and DHSC) and the Adult Social Care Data Outcomes Board (a strategic national group setting the priorities for adult social care national data collections, publications and associated developments). Note that NHS Digital became part of the new NHS England in February 2023.

Any changes to the collection are communicated to local authorities via a Data Provision Notice and are also detailed in the annual ‘September Letter’ and the associated social care collection materials. For 2023-24 there were no changes to the DoLS data collection.

Recent changes to local authorities are as follows:

• On 1 April 2019 Bournemouth and Poole merged to form the new Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole local authority. The inclusion of Christchurch has also reduced the size of the Dorset local authority. Therefore, care should be taken when making comparisons over time for Dorset due to such changes.

• In April 2021 Northamptonshire Local Authority split into North Northamptonshire Council and West Northamptonshire Council. 
• On 1st April 2023 Cumbria Council split to form two new district councils in 2023-24, namely:
  • Cumberland
  • Westmorland and Furness

This publication may be of interest to members of the public, policy officials and other stakeholders to make local and national comparisons and to monitor the quality and effectiveness of services.

In particular, local authorities may find this data helpful in shaping services and making improvements, especially in terms of benchmarking their services and comparing them with previous years or to share best practice with colleagues in other authorities.

DoLS teams across England are working to bring improvements to the DoLS processes and to service users’ quality of life and may use the data presented here to focus their efforts.

Officials in DHSC can use the data contained within this DoLS publication to make decisions about national policy and practice.

Members of the public and other stakeholders, such as charity organisations, can also use this DoLS publication to help satisfy themselves that processes are followed and that officials are acting in service users’ best interests.

In previous years, prior to the publication of 2018-19 data, a detailed annual report formed part of this publication. This provided a broad range of in-depth analysis and commentary around the data. This has not been included in recent years and the publication follows the same format as last year and the data released remains the same.

Instead of providing in-depth analysis upfront, NHS England encourages any users wanting bespoke additional analysis to request this directly and we can work with you to understand your requirements and provide the data. We hope this will provide a more responsive and valuable service to meet your needs. Please send any such requests to [email protected] The resulting analysis is subsequently released alongside the publication.

The table below shows previous years’ annex tables and where they map to in the publication from 2018-19 onwards.  The data released remains the same.