My job is all about proactive Advance Care Planning , my career has been spent in healthcare but it was strange recently to be on the other side; this time as a relative. People who follow me regularly will know I’m slowly emerging from the other side of a family crisis, this short blog (it has to be short, there’s just no energy left for anything more right now), shares one very personal example of the importance of a Lasting Power of Attorney when a person has a stroke.

A Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) is a legal document that allows you to nominate another person to speak for you should you ever lose capacity through a sudden accident or longer-term ill health. I want to take a moment raise awareness about a stoke in the category of a sudden accident.

What is a stroke?

The Stroke Association describes what happens when a person has a stroke, “A stroke happens when the blood supply to part of the brain is cut off, killing brain cells. Damage to the brain can affect how the body works. It can also change how you think and feel.”

A stroke is a common medical emergency, occurring to one person every five minutes:

https://www.stroke.org.uk/what-is-stroke/stroke-statistics

You can find out more about different types of stroke on the excellent website

The impact if a stroke

The impact of a stroke will vary from person to person, and can include cognitive changes meaning a person may be unable to make their own decisions about healthcare or financial matters. A person can be impacted physically too, meaning they could be unable to sign documents or communicate.

What difference does a Lasting Power of Attorney make?

There are two types of Lasting Power of Attorney, one for Health and Welfare and one for Property and Finance, I describe both of these in more detail in earlier blogs. To find out more a good starter blog can be found here.

Health and Welfare

A next of kin has no automatic right to speak for a loved one without a Lasting Power of Attorney. Having a Lasting Power of Attorney ensures that the people who know a person the best can make the decisions that matter the most; there’s no time to set up an LPA in an emergency so knowing we had an LPA in place just in case brought some comfort in our sudden crisis.

Moving on from crisis, longer them decisions may have to be made. I cannot begin to imagine how vulnerable you would feel if you were without the legal authority to speak for your relative. Knowing we can represent wishes, if it’s needed, allows us the security of being the voice for the person we love.

Property and Finance

Even if cognitive ability (or ‘capacity’) is OK the ability to sign important paperwork or talk to providers like insurance companies can be impacted by a stroke. The Property and Finance LPA differs slightly from the Health and Welfare LPA in that it can be used, with the donor’s consent, from the point that it is registered, you have the option to chose when the Property and Finance LPA can take effect when you make an LPA; from our experience, having the LPA instantly available made things so much easier.

Call to action

The registration of a Lasting Power of Attorney is currently taking twenty weeks; you just don’t have twenty weeks to set one up in a crisis. My professional call to arms is always don’t leave it too late, plan ahead, I can now add a very personal call to arms for this message too. Nothing takes away the life changing shock of a stroke, but knowing we can be a voice, if needed, for the person we love so much brings a little control in such a difficult situation.

My call to arms is simple: make sure you have LPAs set up for yourself and the people you love.