When thinking about deprivation of liberty, we must look to Article 5 in the European Convention on Human Rights: the right to liberty and security. The first question is why would we want to deprive people with dementia of their liberty? The circumstances of providing care to a person with dementia may be that they lack capacity to consent to those arrangements. The aim of Article 5 is to ensure that no one should be deprived of their liberty in an arbitrary fashion and that it must be in accordance with a procedure prescribed by law. There must also be the right to challenge the legality of the detention by an independent court or tribunal. The legal considerations for practitioners are, therefore, is this person being deprived of his or her liberty and then, how should it be authorised? In authorising a deprivation of liberty, there may be a choice of legal schemes which could apply, and we will discuss the interface between the Deprivation of liberty/Liberty Protection Safeguards and the Mental Health Act. We will then discuss the amendments the Liberty Protection Safeguards will introduce. In the realm of dementia care, this is a highly significant area.

In this chapter we summarise the key aspects of the mental health legislation (mainly the Mental Health Acts) applicable to people with intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder as they apply to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as proposed new legislation or existing legislation not yet implemented.