Supporting a Young Person to Make their Own Decision

The first 3 statutory principles of the Act set out how you must support young people to make their own decision.

This section of the procedure will support you to apply all 3 principles into practice when supporting young people to make their own decisions.

The purpose of principle 1 in practice is to prevent you from jumping to any conclusions about a young person’s ability to make a decision, or act for themself on the sole basis of:

• Their age;
• Their appearance;
• Their behaviour;
• A physical or mental health condition; or
• Having been found to lack capacity to make a previous decision.

Under the Mental Capacity Act it is unlawful to make a presumption that a young person lacks capacity on the sole basis of any of the above.

Needing support to make a decision is not uncommon and you should never assume that a young person lacks capacity to make a decision on the sole basis that they require support to do so.

The purpose of principle 2 in practice is to ensure that you:

• Uphold a young person's right to make their own decision;
• Identify appropriate support that a young person may or may not need to make a decision; and
• Take all practicable steps to provide any support to enable the young person to make their own decision.

Practicable steps are what needs to be considered when assessing a young person’s capacity.-

They include, but are not limited to:

• Making sure that the young person has all of the relevant information they need to make the decision;
• Where there are a range of choices, making sure that the young person knows about them all;
• Explaining or providing information in a way that is easiest for the young person to understand;
• Communicating with the young person in the way that best works for them;
• Seeking support from others (for example with communication or to obtain specialist information);
• Making the decision at the optimum time (taking into account things like the young person’s need for rest, time to think things over and preferred environment);
• Delaying the decision if the young person is unwell or experiencing a fluctuation in their capacity; and
• Making sure the young person is supported to make choices or express a view.

The steps that are practicable will vary depending on the needs of the young person and the urgency of the presenting situation.

It is your responsibility to establish what steps are practicable, and wherever possible this should be agreed with the young person.

Any information or advice that you give to a young person must be objective and balanced. This means that you must:

• Explore all choices available; and
• Give equal weighting to all choices available; and
• When giving advice about likely consequences of a choice, make sure that your view is evidence based.

You must take care to ensure that you do not (or do not appear to) influence the young person’s decision through:

• The use of (or apparent use of) excessive persuasion; or
• The use of (or apparent use of) undue pressure, for example overbearing or dominating behaviour.

If the young person has experienced a significant or traumatic event prior to needing to make the decision you should consider delaying the decision to allow for them to access any:

• Therapeutic support they may need;
• For the effects of any medication to take place.

An unwise decision is any decision made by the young person that you, or anyone else thinks is not the best decision for them.

The purpose of principle 3 in practice is to prevent you from:

• Making assumptions about what may or may not be right for a young person; and
• Applying your own values and beliefs (or the values and beliefs of others or society) to the young person’s situation.

If a young person makes an unwise decision this must not in itself be taken as an indicator that they lack capacity to make the decision. If the decision puts the young person at risk of harm then this situation should be looked at as a safeguarding issue.