Ms Mary Farrell:

The decisions support service which is coming down the tracks will change everything and that will be the case. That is not the case now. We have come across anomalies in the system where some people have been able to manage their own funds. Recently, newspapers reported a case of a family of a ward of court which was suing a firm of stockbrokers which had gone out of business. Those kinds of anomalies arise in the current system. It is not clear why it would be determined that one family would be better placed to manage a fund than another or what sort of interventions take place to allow that to happen. We contend that these people need their funds to be safe and they need support and a structure, not the office of ward of court structure because that is too archaic, but there was not an alternative.

No one who has been made a ward of court has asked to be made one; they are all wards of court because someone decided they were unable to manage their own affairs, a process was undergone and they ended up in wardship. It is very frustrating for anyone who goes into that system because one knows nothing about it. Unless someone has applied for an older person, for example, one is not told until the day it happens. If one is in court when a settlement is being agreed, it is only then that one will be told that a person is going into wardship. After that, everything is with the courts and one has no further say on the matter. We know of a family that tried to get control of their child's fund last year in order to put it into a trust fund. They went through the court system to try to make that happen because they felt that it was the best way to look after their daughter's fund, which was substantial, but they failed. There is no system other than the Courts Service for people like this.