Social workers are divided over the government’s decision to replace the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) with the Liberty Protection Safeguards (LPS), a poll has found.
While some believe the LPS will be less intrusive for families and less burdensome for practitioners, others fear it will weaken safeguards for vulnerable adults.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) announced in October that it would consult on implementing the LPS in the first half of 2026, seven years after legislation to enact the new system was passed.
About the Liberty Protection Safeguards
LPS was designed to address the impact of the 2014 Cheshire West Supreme Court ruling, which significantly widened the definition of a deprivation of liberty, leading to a sharp rise in DoLS applications and mounting backlogs for local authorities.
It aims to streamline the authorisation process by creating one system for all ages (16 and over) and settings, removing the Court of Protection from the process, reducing the need to use specialist assessors and distributing responsibility for approvals across councils, NHS commissioners and hospitals.
Announcing the change, care minister Stephen Kinnock called DoLS a “broken system” with “intrusive assessments”, adding that the reform would deliver “the best protections and safeguards possible”.
However, opinion within social work was less decisive.
Of 837 respondents to a Community Care poll, 37.5% said LPS would weaken safeguards and human rights protections for those deprived of their liberty. However, 35% supported the reform, believing the new system would be less intrusive and reduce pressures on practitioners.
A further 28% said LPS would only work if the Supreme Court narrowed the definition of a deprivation of liberty, established by the Cheshire West judgment.
Last month, it heard a challenge to the current approach to deprivation of liberty, brought by the Attorney General for Northern Ireland, with the DHSC also intervening in the case in order to overturn the Cheshire West judgment.
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