Compassion in Dying visit to the Office of the Public Guardian

On Thursday the 19th of September, staff members Éabhall & Usha headed up to the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) in Birmingham to find out more about the process of registering a Lasting Power of Attorney for Health and Welfare (LPA).

While most of our callers want to talk about Advance Decisions, many would prefer to complete an LPA, which allows you to appoint a person you trust to make health & welfare decisions on your behalf when you can no longer do so yourself.

Our visit started with a tour of the office, which brought us past each stage of the LPA system from post-opening to caseworking to registration.

We spent time with Simon, who built the LPA online tool, to run through the process of creating an LPA online. This fantastic tool, which was launched in July, allows you to fill in a Lasting Power of Attorney form online. While some parts of the process still have to be done offline, this new tool is really valuable and greatly simplifies the form itself. We were lucky enough to be given a virtual tour of the tool and had our questions expertly answered by Simon.

You can see the digital LPA tool on GOV.UK.

The OPG doesn’t collect any personal information from this until you actually register it, so feel free to play around with the form if you’d like to see how it works.

George, the Technical Adviser, gave us invaluable insight into key parts of the LPA form and how to avoid errors or mistakes. This session will really help us to provide guidance to individuals filling in the form and to help ensure they are completed correctly the first time around.

We also spent some time with the Complaints and Safeguarding teams, learning about the OPG’s responsibilities and powers. All in all, we were most impressed by the OPG’s commitment to reducing waiting times to register an LPA and to providing the best customer service they can, and are really grateful to everyone who spent time with us to make sure we got the most out of the day.

Going forward, our first-hand experience will really add to our ability to inform people about LPAs and support them to appoint a trusted person to make decisions for them when they lose capacity.

You can find more information about Lasting Powers of Attorney for Health & Welfare on our Factsheets page. If you have any questions or would like to chat to someone about an LPA, please call (Freephone) 0800 999 2434 or e-mail info@compassionindying.org.uk