Applications for deprivation of liberty under MCA up by less than 1% compared to same quarter in 2022, but orders nearly double

There were 1,655 applications relating to deprivation of liberty under the Mental Capacity Act made in the most recent quarter (July to September 2023), an increase of less than 1% on the number made in the same quarter in 2022, government data has revealed.

However, the Family Court Statistics Quarterly also revealed that orders increased by 93% in the latest quarter compared to the same period last year, from 637 to 1,232.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said that since the Supreme Court clarified the definition of deprivation of liberty in 2014 in the Cheshire West case, there had been a “significant” increase in the number of applications.

There were 15 applications in January to March 2013, which increased to a high of 1,744 in July to September 2020.

There are also deprivation of liberty applications made to the High Court, which has the power to make deprivation of liberty orders for children under 18.

There were 388 applications for this purpose handling the same number of children, the MoJ revealed.

The majority of these children were teenagers, with 48% of them being between 13 and 15 years old and 27% being between 16 and 18 years old.

Turning to public law cases, the publication revealed there were 4,243 public law cases starting in July to September 2023, up 5% compared to the equivalent quarter in 2022. During this period, care applications made up 68% of public law orders applied for.

There were 6,681 individual children involved in new public law applications in July to September 2023, down 1% on the same quarter in the previous year, while the number of applications made increased by 4%.

Last month, Cafcass revealed the average length of public law care and supervision proceedings in the final quarter of the reporting year (January to March 2023) was 46 weeks - 10 weeks longer than reported for the same period in 2020.

The Family Court Statistics Quarterly has not published statistics on care and supervision proceedings timeliness, and overall public law timeliness, along with a number of other statistics since Q1 (Jan-Mar) 2022.

The MoJ said this was because the rollout of reform in family courts had introduced a new data management system, Core Case Data (CCD), to collect family data.

“As each service area undergoes reform, existing cases stay on the legacy system FamilyMan (FM) until they are disposed or closed, while new cases are recorded on CCD with some key details copied back to FM.

“Currently, family public law (FPL) is undergoing this reform process. However, not all details are copied across for FPL (such as substantive orders other than final). Until work is completed to amalgamate both FM and CCD, several published data series cannot be maintained.”

The series that have been removed “will be reinstated once both data sources have been combined and the data quality assured”.

Lottie Winson