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The Act refers throughout to an 'adult'. In terms of Section 53 of the Act, 'adult' means a person aged 16 years or over.

Section 3(1) defines an 'adult at risk' as someone who meets all of the following three-point criteria:

• they are unable to safeguard their own well-being, property, rights or other interests;
• they are at risk of harm; and
• because they are affected by disability, mental disorder, illness or physical or mental infirmity they are more vulnerable to being harmed than adults who are not so affected.

It should be noted and strongly emphasised that the three-point criteria above make no reference to capacity. For the purposes of the Act, capacity should be considered on a contextual basis around a specific decision, and not restricted to an overall clinical judgement. It is recognised that, due to many factors in an individual's life, capacity to make an authentic decision is a fluctuating concept. Thus, even if deemed to possess general capacity, attention must be paid to whether a person has clear decisional and executional ability (i.e. to both make and action decisions) to safeguard themselves in the specific context arising.

Click here to access the Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007: Code of Practice.