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Capacity Assessment

  • Occurs in a variety of contexts, such as health care decisions, applications for guardianship appointments, and long-term care admission
  • Differs across jurisdictions, laws and types of decisions
  • No single type of capacity assessor or assessment applies to all situations
  • Not all situations that involve capacity criteria require a formal capacity assessment e.g. enterring into a contract
  • In some contexts, the law specifies who must assess capacity
    • Sometimes speech-language pathologists are allowed to assess capacity
  • People should be accommodated in the assessment process
    • e.g. assistance from support people