Through a unique community-government partnership, the Representation Agreement Act was created. This Act was the first of its kind in British Columbia, specifically designed for personal planning.
The Representation Agreement Act has two purposes: 1) to create a legal alternative to adult guardianship; and 2) to enable planning for the future.
Addressing the first purpose has been the greatest challenge. It is an issue of human rights. When I first became involved in the community-driven law reform project, I already had experience with the health system and understood how being labelled incapable could easily make a person invisible. However, I had no idea that if an adult is found incompetent in a legal context, it means the individual becomes a non-person and loses their decision making rights.
The Representation Agreement Act provides a way for an adult to receive support with decision making without losing their rights, while retaining their personhood. It does this by looking at capability from the individual’s perspective, rather than by an absolute standard of who a ‘capable’ person should be.
My involvement with Representation Agreements over the past 18 years has been to help put the law into practice. In 1995, a Resource Centre — now called Nidus — was established to facilitate education and the making of Representation Agreements.
While participating in numerous government reviews of the legislation, Nidus continued to help people learn about and use Representation Agreements. The knowledge gained from these experiences is shared through stories, fact sheets and videos on our new website.
September 1, 2011 is proclamation day for amendments which make Representation Agreements more accessible for health and personal care planning, and which ‘update’ the Enduring Power of Attorney as a full-fledged personal planning tool for financial and legal affairs. The amendments also provide the Advance Directive as a legal tool for giving health care instructions.
From the community’s perspective, the amendments re-affirm the Representation Agreement as a viable and proven legal tool for supported decision making and alternative to adult guardianship.
Nidus has produced new resources and revised existing materials to explain the amendments. Nidus has also created a special website where the community can celebrate its involvement in law-making and more importantly, their involvement in the practice of making and using Representation Agreements for personal planning.
Please join our celebrations at: niduspersonalplanning.tumblr.com
]]>The Ministry of Attorney General has posted information on its website.
Here are some highlights:
These changes bring the certainty and stability that we need to move forward. There is much to do in terms of public and professional education and Nidus is prepared to lead the way.
There are many reasons to move quickly. The ‘rising tide of dementia’ and the aging population are only two factors that require us to give immediate attention to personal planning.
Nidus has been at the forefront of promoting and facilitating personal planning. Our proposal in October 2006 helped chart the course for BC’s new legal landscape for personal planning.
In these tight economic times, everyone will have to work together. Funding bodies, government and professionals will need to support community expertise to ensure information is accessible and consistent.
Nidus, as the centre for excellence in personal planning, will be calling for full co-operation from all of these groups in order to ensure that British Columbians have access to the best personal planning support anywhere in the world.
Nidus will be providing details on the changes to personal planning legislation. You can stay up-to-date by subscribing to the Nidus Newsletter or by checking back with the website from time to time.
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The effort has been all-consuming and has limited our ability to respond to some other requests. You will see that we still have a number of items to add. We hope this will keep you coming back and checking in!
We’d like to hear from you. We expect there will be some glitches and we want to know so we can correct them. However, we hope you will focus on sharing your stories, ideas and vision for personal planning in British Columbia. Send an email to tell us your favourite part of the new site.
One of the reasons a new website became a priority was the 10th Anniversary of the Representation Agreement Act that we celebrated earlier this year. We realized we had reached a significant milestone. (Sometimes you are so busy you don’t realize how much time has passed and how much you have achieved.) We wanted to mark this occasion not just by reflecting on the past but by looking to the future. We have only begun the work of public and professional education! We needed to make it easier to access the information and resources we have gathered and developed over the years.
The Representation Agreement Act has its roots in community discussions dating back to the late 1980’s. The content on this site is an attempt to collect and consolidate the knowledge and expertise gained over the past 20 years when the community dared to envision reforming the law (not just updating it or modernizing it) and then to keep it alive in practice.
This website, particularly the History Section, is our way to honour the vision and effort of citizens, community groups and professionals who worked together to create a legal tool that enables all adults in British Columbia to engage in meaningful and effective personal planning. You are making history today as you learn about and use Representation Agreements. I trust the resources we have made available here will be helpful!
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