Learn, test, reflect and apply.
Work through a structured route across the Practice Support Hub, combining MCA foundations, post-AGNI deprivation of liberty learning, case analysis, reflective supervision and a final applied assessment.
Start the pathway ↓
This 3-hour self-directed CPD pathway guides you through six connected stages of learning across the Mental Capacity Act and deprivation of liberty practice. You will refresh core principles, explore capacity and restrictions, apply rights and safeguards to realistic practice situations, and strengthen how you evidence and record professional reasoning.
The pathway combines visual learning, interactive activities, case-based decision-making and reflective practice, finishing with From Evidence to Defensible Practice – an applied case activity that brings the learning together.
6 stages · 3 hours structured CPD · Practical and interactive · Final applied practice activity
How to use it: complete the stages in order. Open each required resource, work through the activity, then return here for the next stage. The wider Hub remains available for additional briefings, visual summaries, tools and practice support.
Each stage has a defined learning purpose and required activity. The images and resources come directly from the MCA & DoL Practice Support Hub.
Identify what you need from the CPD and reconnect with the core MCA principles that should shape decision-specific practice.
Focus on presumption of capacity, support to decide, unwise decisions, decision specificity and the relationship between evidence and professional judgement.
Refresh the MCA through active recall and consider what evidence actually matters before reaching a capacity conclusion.
Use the flashcards as active recall, then review the Hub visual summaries for the issues you want to strengthen.
Move beyond shortcuts and practise a fact-sensitive analysis of the person’s concrete situation, restrictions, lived impact, objection and consent.
The activity includes confidence rating, multifactorial analysis, valid-consent reasoning and a short practice-change reflection.
Work with case material to distinguish labels from the person’s actual lived arrangements. Test necessity, proportionality, alternatives, safeguards and the evidence behind professional conclusions.
Use the Hub’s reflective supervision pathway to challenge assumptions and examine the person, everyday reality, impact, restrictions, safeguards and review.
Work through the six conversations in sequence: Person first → Everyday reality → Response of the person → Scrutinise restrictions → Options & safeguards → Next steps.
Bring the pathway together through one complex fictional case. Work progressively through capacity evidence, wishes and feelings, family and professional views, restrictions, risks, alternatives, consent or objection, safeguards and defensible recording.
Final task: identify what matters, make and test your judgements, choose the most defensible professional rationale, then identify what you will change in your own practice.
Help us review and improve the DCC-i Portal and this learning pathway. Please complete the short User Experience & Learning Evaluation after finishing the six stages.
Complete the evaluation ↗The endpoint is active engagement with the pathway and an applied final judgement, not simply time spent on the page.
Complete all six stages, finish the final applied case and submit your final practice reflection.
