Calls for changes to help families with power of attorney

A COUNCILLOR is calling for a national awareness campaign to help prevent power of attorney and guardianship issues that many families are facing nowadays.

Pauline Drysdale, who represents the Castle Douglas and Crocketford, has consistently fought for improvements to the struggling health and social care service in Dumfries and Galloway.

She insisted that the ongoing problem of delayed discharge from hospitals could be eased slightly if more elderly people/adults with limited mental capacity had support in setting up their power of attorney or guardianships.

Speaking at the last Stewartry Area Committee, Cllr Drysdale said: “We are continuing to see delayed discharge and constantly finding out that people don’t have their power of attorney in place, and nor do they have their guardianship set up.

“This is especially for the elderly, but also for young people, It causes continual delays in getting people back into the system and being looked after by the home teams and the community nursing teams.”

She then called for changes to the system to make setting up power of attorney or guardianship more accessible, adding: “Putting this information constantly on national websites does not actually help our elderly population. They don’t look at websites. They can’t find information online.

“There’s currently a poster at the hospital which you can see on the right hand side when you leave.

“We need a national campaign and we need to have information in all the doctor’s surgeries and optometrists, post offices, etc to really push and try and help people with power of attorney and guardianship.”

Rebecca Aldridge, the council’s senior operational manager for adult care, said: “Thank you Councillor Drysdale, you’re more than aware of the challenges around guardianship.

“Some cases are related to a lack of legal support and the challenges in terms of actually getting legal support, particularly for private guardianships.

“However, there is a real focus on power of attorney and on guardianships at the moment for the very reasons that you’ve noted.

“I have a particular interest in this and feel strongly that, as you’ve pointed out, we should be getting to people much earlier in their journey.

“So, when people are first diagnosed or when somebody actually first notices that there’s a deficit in somebody’s ability to remember things for example, that’s when we need to be speaking to people.”