Story Seventy One - Declarations

 At the ("Window Dressing") Case Conference on 10th August 2010, Hillingdon announced that they would be making an application to the Court of Protection. The nature of the application would be to ask the Court to review the DoL and to make a best interests decision as to where Steven lives. They promised to submit the application within the week.

They lied. On two counts.

They didn't submit their application until 25th October 2010 but throughout the period from 10th August until 25th October, they told me they had submitted an application and that the delay was with the Court.

The second lie was that they didn't submit a DoL's review application - they made an application to be appointed Steven's welfare deputy. This would have effectively given them complete control over all the decisions in Steven's life. The declarations they sought didn't even mention the DoLs.

Obviously, I didn't know any of this until we got to court but it was terrifying. I was used to them lying by now, but the implications of this were huge and the consequences for Steven were just awful.

These are the declarations they asked for in their application:

a declaration that Steven Neary lacks the mental capacity to decide where he should live and what contact he should have with his family.

• a declaration that it is lawful for Hillingdon Council to place Steven Neary in appropriate residential accommodation identified by the council and to

• A declaration that it is in the best interests of Steven for contact between Steven and his parents Mr and Mrs Neary to be supervised and at the discretion of Hillingdon Council.

• A declaration that it is lawful for Hillingdon Council to make arrangements for the supervision and restraint of Steven when he is in the community and this will include when Steven visits the homes of Mr or Mrs Neary.

• Permission to Hillingdon Council to commission experts to assess Steven regarding the identification of the triggers and assaulting others. (sic)

• A declaration that it is lawful for Hillingdon Council to make long-term welfare decisions regarding the future care and residence of Steven Neary.

• Orders regarding the disclosure of information and images relating to Steven and others particularly on social network sites.

Deceiving everyone (including the Court) until the very end, it is chilling to think they might have actually got away with this. I'd imagine they have done this before with other people and goodness knows what happened to them.