Legal
At the time of his accident in 2013, Aaron was a 17 year old with a passion for cars and motorbikes. His friends and family described him as a caring, thoughtful and popular young man. He had a wonderful sense of humour and would always make his friends and family laugh. Aaron was studying Motor Vehicle Maintenance and he was working as an apprentice at a vehicle repair shop. On the day of the accident he was travelling to his job when he was involved in a road traffic collision. He suffered a severe traumatic brain injury as well as various severe orthopaedic injuries. His family were told that he may not survive and if he did he may never regain consciousness. Aaron underwent emergency lifesaving surgery and remained in hospital for around 3 months. He was then transferred to a specialist brain injury rehabilitation unit for intensive rehabilitation. He remained at this unit until December 2015 following which he was discharged home where he continued with his rehabilitation journey.
In serious injury cases, there are three options when it comes to private care: gratuitous care, commercial care or a combination of the two (excluding inpatient long-term care which can be funded on a private basis). When an injured person is recovering, it is common for family members to provide gratuitous care; that is care free of charge.
However, often family members need to return to work, they may have children who need their focus and attention and/or they may already be providing care for elderly relatives. It is therefore quite common to seek commercial care at a relatively early stage in an injured person’s recovery if liability (fault) has been established.
Technology plays a day to day role in our lives and mobile phones, tablets, Alexa and Siri are common place. Imagine the impact on your life if you were no longer able to interact with a touch screen or keyboard or give voice commands.... In this virtual event, Assistive Technology expert Andy Fell gives practical demonstrations of how everyday technology and specialist technology can be used to help give independence to those who need it most and why specialist technology may be needed.
Karen Ledger (KL): When brain injury occurs, it's like a bomb going off in the family. Life will never be the same again for any of the members of that family. People will be shocked, bewildered and overwhelmed, and they then have to go through a complicated process of adjustment, and people reach that adjustment at different stages. The person with the brain injury will generally have a neuropsychologist assigned to support them. Most will pay attention to people's feelings and emotions, but the rest of the family may not have any psychological support. This situation doesn't get better of itself without professional input, it can get worse and people’s mental health can and often does spiral down. Louise Jenkins (LJ): It’s a particular challenge if you've got someone with little or no insight. They often won't recognise the need for or be willing to engage with neuropsychological treatment until much further down the line, by which stage, the family may have entered a more advanced stage of crisis and their whole family unit may be at risk of breakdown. There are complex emotions involved in the adjustment process following trauma which include shock, guilt and loss.
When looking at the question of capacity to consent to sexual relations, the Courts have historically held that the threshold is low, but a recent judgment of the Court of Appeal has expanded the test for capacity in relation to sexual relations, and has held that the relevant question is whether the person has the mental capacity to engage in sexual relations, rather than to consent to sexual relations.
Presumption of capacity
The question of capacity is issue and time specific. A person must be assumed to have capacity to make any decision unless it is established that he lacks capacity [Section 1 (2) of the Mental Capacity Act 2005].
For a clinician or therapist, the prospect of getting involved in medico-legal work can be exciting. It is an opportunity to consider clinical issues from a different perspective: what are the injured person’s reasonable needs and how can these needs be met, with the possibility of no funding restrictions?
There is an opportunity to assess injured people in their own time, working around other professionals and family commitments. There is the potential to be challenged, in a constructive way, by barristers and solicitors, further strengthening and improving their knowledge and area of expertise.
The risks of undertaking medico-legal work
However, in addition to the benefits, there are risk areas that aspiring medico-legal experts need to be aware of before building a medico-legal practice.
Georgina Moorhead of Irwin Mitchell focuses on cohabitation and marriage in the second part of her special feature.
David Withers, of Irwin Mitchell, on which option is best for the injured person.
In a serious injury case, it is common for there to be a dispute about whether an individual has sustained a traumatic brain injury with likely subsequent lifelong problems or whether they have suffered from a psychological reaction which, with appropriate treatment, could result in a full recovery. This is an important argument because it [...]
Under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act we all have a right to enjoy a private and family life. The need for relationships and intimacy is an essential part of most of our lives but for individuals living with an acquired brain injury, this can be far more complex, as Georgina Moorhead of Irwin Mitchell explains.
