XX v West Northamptonshire Council & Anor [2022] EWCOP 40

​Best interests decision concerning whether an 89-year-old diagnosed with Alzheimer’s should move back to Jamaica.

XX is 89 years old and originally from Jamaica but came to the UK to live and work in the 1960s. He has a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and had lived at his current care home since December 2020 after he was discharged from hospital following a collapse. His family from Jamaica had proposed that he return to live with them under a care package (commended by Lieven J) including travel by air ambulance paid for out of XX’s capital. The evidence from the medics was broadly that there was a risk of disorientation but that XX was physically capable.

A complicating factor as Lieven J highlights at [5] is that the delays in the courts following the pandemic meant that XX’s health had detriorated from the time of the application in early 2021 until this decision in July 2022. She concludes that the move is still in XX’s best interests as it reflected his wishes and at [32] she adds:

“There are also in my view intangible benefits that lie in the nature of human feeling and experience for XX to spend those last years with a loving family around him rather than being cared for by strangers in a care home.”

Read the judgment on the National Archives