The focus of the event will be on identifying here-and-now essentials for AWI practice, in addition to other matters that may present in the future.
 
About the Seminar:
“Need to know” developments for practitioners, particularly but not limited to AWI practitioners, arise from the 2024 World Congress on Adult Support and Care.  Rapidly developing understanding and application of human rights principles, and their progressive integration into the interpretation of the provisions and requirements of our AWI legislation, mean that the updates offered in this seminar have become essential not only to achieve best practice, but to provide minimum standards of adequate services.
 
Immediately applicable are the obligations upon court practitioners to make good the increasingly wide “implementation gaps” often encountered in our courts; while all practitioners need to ensure compliance with requirements such as providing to persons with disabilities whatever support “they may require in exercising their legal capacity”, and where appropriate to offer arrangements such as co-decision-making and advance choices, as well as being constantly aware of the broad scope and effects of the universality of vulnerability.
 
To be prepared for, as coming soon, is a fundamental review of “capacity/incapacity” in the face of suggestions that it is “an unhelpful and redundant concept”, and should be replaced with the more universal and less discriminatory concept of vulnerability; and also the strong pressure for a UN Convention on the Rights of Older Persons. 
 
The influence of at least some of these developments is likely to be seen in the forthcoming Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) (Amendment) Bill, anticipated to have been published by the time of the seminar, in which case the speakers will include at least initial comments on what it contains (and does not contain).
 
The speakers, Adrian Ward and Sarah Prentice, formed Scotland’s official delegation to the 2024 World Congress in Buenos Aires, the next World Congress after the 2022 event in Edinburgh.  With over 600 delegates from 33 countries across every inhabited continent, the 2024 Congress offered a broad understanding of worldwide developments, an understanding enhanced by Sarah’s fluency in Spanish. 
 
About the Speakers, Adrian Ward and Sarah Prentice:
Adrian Ward - Adrian Ward is a recognised national and international expert in adult incapacity law. His books include the current standard Scottish texts on the subject. He has been convener of the Mental Health and Disability Committee of the Law Society of Scotland since 1989. His awards include an MBE for services to the mentally handicapped in Scotland; a lifetime achievement award at the 2014 Scottish Legal Awards; and being made an honorary member of the Law Society of Scotland in 2017.
 
Sarah Prentice - Sarah Prentice has significant experience in the field of Mental Health and Adults with Incapacity Law. She is Senior Solicitor for the Scottish Social Services Council, the regulatory body for social service workers. She is also an independent Safeguarder for the Sheriffdom of Lothian and Borders. Sarah is an Advisory Committee Member of the European Law Institute’s Advance Choices for Future Disablement. Sarah is also a committee member of the Society for Solicitors in the Supreme Courts in Scotland and a member of the law society of Scotland’s Wellbeing Steering Group.
 
Originally Recorded: 5.3.25
CPD Time: 2 Hours