Day sixteen: the facility will check the rules

Last week the facility set down in writing, for the first time, the conditions under which Trudy may have contact with her family: a limited number of minutes by phone each day, one visit per week, and a request not to discuss returning home. Today, on day sixteen, there is a development — and it concerns the question underneath all of it.

The question on the table

When the family received the written arrangements, one point was put back to the facility: are these restrictions on contact formally recorded, and are they open to review? In other words — is there a decision, resting on a legal basis, that can be appealed? Or is this a state of affairs without such a basis?

That is not a detail. Restrictions on contact between an 82-year-old mother and her family touch her fundamental rights. The Dutch Care and Compulsion Act (Wzd) ties such restrictions to conditions: they must be necessary and proportionate, and they must be recorded in writing in a way that can be reviewed.

What the facility replied

The facility did not deflect the question. In its reply it calls the question a fair one and undertakes to check with the treating physicians and come back on it.

With that, the lawfulness of the contact restrictions is now an open question that the facility itself will answer in writing. That answer is awaited.

Where this is heading

The family keeps contact going as much as possible — that remains the starting point, now as before. At the same time, the question of the basis for the restrictions is being pursued through the proper channel, together with the independent client confidential adviser for involuntary care.

This coming Friday, 24 July, Trudy turns 83.

This post is based on written documents in the family’s possession. Staff members are not named. Where positions or interpretations are described, they are identified as such. As long as the review is ongoing, no conclusions are drawn.