Your right to decline support
SAFEGUARDING / WHAKAHAUMARUTIA
Respecting people’s choices
Sometimes people’s own personal actions (or lack of action) can cause neglect.
People’s ability to make choices about their own lives is vital – and sometimes people don’t want to address the neglect or be involved in a safeguarding response:
Some organisations can provide supported decision-making and advocacy. This means checking in with the person that the decisions they’re making really are their choice, without judgement or influence.
Where a person makes an informed decision not to get safeguarding help, and they have decision-making capacity, any resultant self-neglect won’t result in a safeguarding response (as it would fall outside of the agency’s scope of work).
Initially, however, the critical information about the person’s capacity might not be available, or clear.
While SAFA Co-ordinators will always seek to respect the wishes of the disabled person, they have a duty to act when there are concerns about safety.
A SAFA Co-ordinator might get involved in certain circumstances:
For example: Where choices are being made by a disabled person where the risks are high, and the consequences might not be fully understood and considered by the disabled person, without supported decision-making processes.
This might look like:
Experiencing continued intimate partner violence.
Experiencing severe physical harm or experiencing sexual harm.
Financial exploitation (this could include being taken advantage of by people who move into a disabled person’s home and put the tenancy at risk).
Coercion into illegal activity.
In these instances, the safeguarding organisation can assist you with supported decision-making advocacy or by supporting the assessment of the person’s decision-making capability.
They’ll do this in consultation with the disabled person and their whānau, wherever possible – and with their consent.
Disabled people have the right to make the informed choices they want to make, even if they seem unwise to whānau or to professionals.