👀 Am I the only one who thinks this Supreme Court DoLS ruling might actually be a good thing? You’ve probably seen the headlines over the last few days. ❗ "Thousands no longer deprived of their liberty." ❗ "People can now be kept somewhere without consent." And honestly, a lot of it feels like panic-driven clickbait. Yes, something important has changed. The Supreme Court has moved away from the old Cheshire West acid test, so that familiar two question approach is no longer the full legal answer on its own. I keep coming back to the same thought. Was that ever really enough anyway? For years, that test gave people something clear to work with. It was simple, easy to remember, easy to apply. But it also made things far too easy to reduce down to a tick-box exercise. Ask two questions, get an answer, move on, that might have been helpful, but it also created complacency. When you’re dealing with deprivation of liberty, surely it was never supposed to be just about two fixed questions. It should always be about the person in front of you. Their lived experience. Their presentation. Their wishes and feelings. The way they engage with the world around them. Whether they appear settled, distressed, resistant, comfortable, withdrawn, safe, unsafe. All of that matters and that’s why, for me, this shift is not automatically a bad thing. It does make things harder, I completely get that. It removes a very simple measurement tool and replaces it with something more bespoke, more interpretive, more dependent on professional judgement. That will make some people uncomfortable, but good practice was never supposed to hang entirely on one blunt tool anyway. Let’s be clear, because this is where I think people start getting carried away. 👉This does not mean safeguards suddenly don’t matter. 👉It does not mean that if somebody looks happy, that’s the end of the conversation. 👉And it definitely does not mean we stop thinking about rights, capacity, restriction, or authorisation. If somebody cannot make decisions about their care and arrangements, their rights still matter. Safeguards still matter. Legal protection still matters. No ifs, no buts. What’s changed is not that we stop caring about those things. What’s changed is that we now have to look at the whole picture rather than relying on a rigid formula alone and actually, that should work both ways. If somebody is in a placement and everything on paper looks “fine”, but in reality they are clearly distressed, clearly unsettled, clearly showing through behaviour or presentation that this isn’t right for them, that should matter. That should mean something and should never be brushed aside just because a form has been completed or a test has been met. So maybe that’s why I’m not reacting with the same panic I’m seeing elsewhere. Yes, it creates uncertainty. Yes, it opens the door for poor practice if people misuse it. Yes, there’s a risk that some organisations may misunderstand it and get things badly wrong. But there was always risk in a system where people leaned too heavily on a simplified tool instead of properly understanding the Mental Capacity Act, DoLS, best interests, restriction, rights, and proportionality. And if we’re being really honest, that’s part of the wider issue here. This area of practice should never have been something people only half understand. It affects some of the most vulnerable people, in some of the most restrictive situations, and yet it still doesn’t always get the depth of training or understanding it deserves. That’s not always because people are careless. In many cases it’s the opposite. people care so much that they overprotect. They step in too quickly. They remove choice without meaning to, they restrict because they want to keep someone safe. In doing that, they can take away voice, rights, and autonomy. That’s what this is really about. ❌ So no, I don’t think the answer is to panic. ❌ And no, I don’t think the answer is to pretend nothing has changed either. 🤔 I think the answer is to get better, better understanding, better judgement, better recording, better person-centred thinking. The old Cheshire West test gave people a very clear route, his new direction asks more of us. That might feel uncomfortable, but maybe that discomfort is exactly what forces people to stop relying on shortcuts and start properly understanding what deprivation of liberty actually means. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe that’s actually long overdue. I’d be genuinely interested to hear how others are seeing it, because I know this won’t be everyone’s view. But from where I’m standing, this feels less like the sky falling in and more like the system being pushed towards something it should probably have been doing all along. A more individual, person-centred, evidence based approach.