Dr Brian Cox, a long standing member of PAVAUK wrote to us recently and his comments article do ask a lot of questions. It is reproduced in full. Any comments do please feed back through this website.
Regards,
CEO.
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Is PAVAUK aware that DH have commissioned a Practice Guide for those working with vulnerable adults?
You will recall my interest from the paper PAVAUK published on ROLE OF GUARDIANS IN COMBATING ELDER ABUSE but this did not stress another aspect of my thinking, namely the notion that Vulnerability is a human condition from which it follows that separate concepts of 'adult vulnerability' and 'child vulnerability' are nonsensical. I have done some cock-shy notes on this theme (see below) that may be of interest to anyone in PAVAUK who may be called upon to help with the work on the Practice Guide.
VULNERABILITY AS A HUMAN CONDITION
Practice guidance needs to take this view seriously and consider all kinds of human vulnerability and response to it.
Danger to airline passengers is a useful and topical example particularly re vulnerability to acts of terrorism. A suspected terrorist might in other circumstance be classed as the most vulnerable of all those on board a plane if found to be mentally ill (e.g., the Mukonyi incident on a Nairobi-Gambia flight, 2001 - I have an account of this if you wish to see) but all passengers and crew were equally vulnerable to serious harm or death due to Mr M's attempts to crash the plane. One could go through the passenger list and ask whether a disabled older man or a babe in arms were 'even more' vulnerable than the others but is this a pointless exercise (except to show conclusively that an adults v. children divide over vulnerability is absurd)?
Actions taken to restrain Mr M. would be justified circumstantially: likewise the overall vulnerability of the other passengers is primarily circumstantial (with possible exceptions mentioned above). Circumstantial vulnerability is a pervasive phenomena in modern society and this needs to be related to practice implications to answer questions such as what restriction on a person's freedom is justified to protect the many.
As to the nature of the restraint, key criterion has to be its effectiveness and in many circumstances this will mean physical restraint, e.g. holding the person. Useful link here with 'holding powers' and their use in these and other contexts where the restraint has to be physical. Also useful to link to concept of custody: is a 'custodian' one empowered to physically ensure a person stays in one place? What is custodianship and how related to guardianship - sometimes used interchangeably in the literature?.
In other contexts the criterion discussed is proportionality, e.g. householders' response to intrusion from burglars. Present ruling that response threat has to be 'reasonable' disregards reality of an 'unreasonable' situation in which householder is made vulnerable (without warning) to an illegal act against him/her/them. Again, in other contexts, burglar might be the vulnerable one (unemployed, low income, family to support) but his condition doesn't (and in my view shouldn't) provide protection against a retaliatory response from householder (not to mention that this/these person(s) may have personal vulnerabilities of his/her/their own!)
BRIAN COX
(member PAVAUK)
