Matters of the mind and heart: the emotional experience of assessing mental capacity as a social worker

This thesis reports on a psychosocial practice-near research project exploring the social worker’s emotional experience when assessing mental capacity under the Mental Capacity Act (2005). There is existing research into how mental capacity is assessed, including by social workers practicing in a range of health and social care settings. However, there is a lack of work exploring the professional’s emotional experience whilst assessing. This thesis reports on research combining two methods to examine this. First, it reports on a critical autoethnography of social work practice in local authority rough sleeping provision. This autoethnographic analysis foregrounds the epistemological demands inherent to assessing capacity, and dimensions of physical and gendered personal experience and intersubjective encounters during assessment. Second, the thesis uses these autoethnographic findings to inform an interview-based exploration of the experiences of six social workers who assess mental capacity in their everyday practice. The interview-based exploration further evidences insights from the autoethnographic analysis, particularly regarding the emotional toll of accomplishing ‘good’ decisions. The thesis contributes to the field of social work in two ways: first, by illustrating how autoethnographic and narrative methods can be used together in the service of practitioner research which attends directly to the complexity of practice experience; and second, by articulating a more nuanced understanding of the emotional experience of the social worker assessing mental capacity as socially situated and embodied in nature. The thesis concludes by addressing the ethical imperative of integrating considerations of professional experience of assessing mental capacity and the experiences of individuals subject to these assessments, i.e., through collaborative autoethnography. Such integration means taking seriously the significance of intersubjective processes in assessments whilst affording opportunities to unsettle prevailing assumptions regarding the primacy of professional expertise in understanding practice in this area.