Elder Care: Health Care Consent and Advance Care Planning and What You Should Know

Before health providers provide care or treatment they must get an informed consent from you. Health Care Consent also involves planning your care needs based on your present health condition. Advance care planning is a process of planning for a time when you may not have the mental capacity to make decisions about your health care. It usually involves choosing someone to make decisions on your behalf when you are not able to do so. This person is known as a substitute decision-maker. Join Graham Webb, Executive Director at the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly as he discusses the issues around health care consent, advance care planning, powers of attorney and substitute decision-making.

The Advocacy Centre for the Elderly (ACE) is a community legal clinic for low income senior citizens. ACE provides direct legal services to low-income seniors, public legal education, and engages in law reform activities.

Facilitator:

Graham Webb is a lawyer and the Executive Director at the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly since October 2016. Previously he had been a Staff Litigation Lawyer with the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly since May 1995. ACE gives direct client representation to older adults on age-related legal issues. He gives frequent legal education presentations on elder law issues to older adults and service providers, including police, health-care professionals and other lawyers.

He is a contributing author of Long-Term Care Facilities in Ontario: The Advocate’s Manual, which is published by ACE, and is the author of journal and newsletter articles. He is a former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Law and Social Policy.

He has been a part-time evening instructor in Gerontology at Ryerson University, and has won an award from the Continuing Education Students’ Association at Ryerson for excellence in teaching.

He is an elected member of the Canadian Bar Association, National Elder Law Section Executive Committee. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Canadian Centre for Elder Law Studies.