Please help! I am new to caregiving. Are these lawful or unlawful in DOLS?

Alva, it's the questions (or ones very like them) that have come up before. Students search the internet for help with their assignments, and there's nothing wrong with that; but as I remember it there were some scathing views on the quality of this particular training module.

Thank goodness, I'm pretty sure that the OP is not actually dealing with all these problems. It certainly would be some facility, eh!

This has come up several times before (I seem to remember there were some quite rude comments about the training that used this questionnaire, weren't there?)

Jenbee, are you doing a multiple choice paper or giving full answers? And what jurisdiction's DOLS, by the way? They do vary.

You have many issues here. I would suggest that you meet with an ombudsman as soon as you are able, and a conference with the facility, ombudsman and social worker is likely in order. Many of your questions have one answer IF this and another answer IF that, if you see what I mean. Restraints of course can lose a facility its license; they are seldom used in this day and age unless there is a serious threat of injury to a patient if not restrained. As to visitation, if same is very disruptive to a facility and perhaps to the person visited, it again falls in the "iffy" category. Much depends also on who has guardianship or POA of a patient. An hour of time with a Lawyer who specializes in elder care issues may be well worth it at some point. Keep careful records and diaries of what happens on a daily basis, who you are speaking with, what you said and what they said, and what the outcome was. Diaries are very useful. Wishing you good luck moving forward. Do give us as much information as you are able when you visit the forum, because "hard and fast" answers almost do not figure in the world of elder care. I will say that if you have an adversarial relationship with a place giving care to someone you love it does often not work out well for you, for the facility, and most importantly for the person you love. Good luck.

DOLS stands for Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards. It's a UK (not US) law.

https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/get-support/legal-financial/deprivation-liberty-safeguards-dols

For those who are interested, this link is to a page that explains DoLS "at a glance." Quite a lingering glance, mind.

https://www.scie.org.uk/mca/dols/at-a-glance

For wishful thinking and lovely-in-theories, I can't remember when I saw a better piece of legislation. I probably shouldn't say that. I take it back.

Anyway - there are some interesting worked examples for the general reader.

Is this a homework assignment? Only a few people here that could help with UK standards.

Can I make a guess? The only one that might be acceptable is #1 but even that I have doubts about, our nursing home had to close the kitchen completely for repairs and they had meals catered by an outside group.
Oh, and I suppose you might possibly caution someone not to visit when there is an illness but you can't actually prevent it.

cwillie, I understand what you are saying.  I stated what the policy is for most of the assisted living and long term care/nursing home facilities where I live.  The nursing home that my Mom was in went into "quarantine mode" and locked the front door so that visitors could not enter while the residents had the flu or influenza one winter.

Sending you a private message, Jenbee.

Jenbee, it would have been nice if you had stated that these were some questions that you had been asked during your recent “Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS)” training in the UK and that you wanted some feedback from the Forum. 

I “glanced” at the “Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) at a glance” website and found it quite interesting because many of the activities that cannot be performed today were SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) before the 1980’s.

Forty years ago, psychiatric hospitals looked like and were run like the hospital in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (which was an actual hospital and some of the patients in the movie were actual psychiatric patients of that hospital). It was common to use restraints, either physical or chemical (such as medications), to control a patient and to have locked wards/nursing units. (We have locked Memory Care Units today for people suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s’ who tend to wander or are violent.) As society changed and civil rights became more important, the rights of people with psychiatric illnesses became more important. It was thought that “Society” could take care of these people and that they did not / do not need to be hospitalized. Now more and more of these people with psychiatric illnesses are ending up in ER Departments repeatedly or in jail or prison.

In regards to your questions:

Most of the activities violate a person’s rights but there are exceptions, such as:

Number 4: “Continued refusal to allow a son to visit his mother?” has been a complaint of some posters because either the POA or guardian refuses to allow the son (or daughter or other relative) to visit his/her mother OR because the son has been abusive towards his mother while she was residing in a long term care facility and the administrator of the LTC facility decides that the son cannot visit his mother for her own safety.

Number 5: “Asking a son not to visit his mother one day because his mother is unwell?” happens when many of the residents in a long term care facility have a contagious illness such as influenza and the facility does not want visitors to spread the illness to other residents or to the residents’ families.

I hope that this answers your question as to whether the questions you asked are lawful or not.