Capacity and Power of Attorney.

The following was submitted to the website and has been anonymised before posting here.
I am writing to ask whether you would consider an anonymised case study based on my personal experience, raising concerns about the application of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA), safeguarding and institutional accountability.

I am a freelance caregiver with over 20 years of professional experience. For more than two years, I provided live-in care to an elderly woman under a privately funded arrangement. We developed a close relationship based on trust, continuity of care and mutual understanding.

Towards the end of 2025, during a hospital attendance at her express wish, a sequence of actions involving her LPA and hospital staff resulted in my exclusion and removal from the hospital, while her expressed wishes and established care relationship appeared to be disregarded.

Over the past 12 months, I have approached every institution and available channel from which I reasonably expected to obtain a proper explanation and accountability. Instead, I have repeatedly encountered confidentiality being invoked as a barrier to meaningful answers, while fundamental questions remain unresolved:

Was the presumption of capacity respected, and was any decision-specific capacity assessment properly documented?
How were her expressed wishes and the LPA’s representations reconciled under the MCA?
On what documented evidence was my exclusion considered to be in her best interests?
Why did the hospital subsequently confirm that no safeguarding concern naming me had been recorded, either at the time or later?
Why have the hospital and care agency provided inconsistent accounts of their respective involvement?
Who made the decisions, on what evidence and under whose authority?
The woman has since died. I remain concerned that both she and I were subjected to a sequence of actions amounting, in my experience, to institutional abuse, without any satisfactory independent examination of what happened.

My central concern is the accountability imbalance between individuals and institutions: how can decisions affecting a person’s autonomy, dignity and established care relationships be scrutinised when the institutions involved control the information, invoke confidentiality and never provide a complete, consistent and evidenced explanation?

I would welcome the opportunity to submit this experience as an anonymised, evidence-supported case study for professional discussion and public-interest learning.