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They know you.
What is Advance Planning?
Advance planning can cover different areas of your life. These may include decisions about:
- Healthcare and medical treatment
- Personal welfare and care arrangements
- Money and finances
- Property and assets
There are two formal and legally recognised ways to record these wishes and appoint one or more persons to act for you if you need them to in the future:
An Enduring Power of Attorney, which allows you to appoint someone you trust to make decisions on your behalf about your personal welfare, property and financial affairs.
An Advance Healthcare Directive, which allows you to record your wishes about treatment decisions.
Together, these arrangements help ensure that decisions made in the future reflect your wishes and values.
The people who know you best
Two ways to plan ahead
Enduring Power of Attorney
An Enduring Power of Attorney is a secure legal arrangement that lets you plan ahead for a time when you may not be able to make decisions for yourself. It lets you appoint someone you trust to be able to make those decisions on your behalf and set out the types of decisions they will make.
This can include decisions about:
- Managing your money and finances
- Looking after property or assets
- Your personal welfare and living arrangements
Making an Enduring Power of Attorney can be an important step in the here and now to help secure the future that you want and ensure that the people you trust have the legal authority to act for you.
Advance Healthcare Directive
An Advance Healthcare Directive allows you to set out your wishes about treatment decisions in case you lose the ability to make these decisions in the future. It helps healthcare professionals and those close to you understand and respect your intentions in relation to the treatment. It only becomes effective if you lose capacity to make these decisions in the future. If that happens, refusing treatment in an advance healthcare directive is the same as a person with capacity refusing treatment.
An advance healthcare directive can include:
- Your wishes about treatment decisions
- Treatments that you intend to refuse, and treatments that you wish to request
- Appointing someone close to you as a designated healthcare representative to make treatment decisions on your behalf
Why planning ahead matters
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Getting started
What you said about the DSS
"The DSS website answers many questions you and your possible Attorneys may have. And if they’re still unsure, they too can call the DSS helpline"
Joe, EPA donor
"It’s very easy to do it yourself online through the DSS portal. You have total control over the process. And there is always someone on the other end of the phone there to help. Everything was made so easy"
Aisling, EPA Attorney
"People don’t want to talk about this process because they think it’s a bad thing. Because we had an EPA, we were able take care of my dad’s arrangements"
Aisling, EPA Attorney
"I found the Decision Support Service to be very user-friendly. Made the whole process really easy and held our hand every step of the way. It was an excellent service, and I would highly recommend it"
Etaoin, EPA Attorney
"I did naturally have some questions when I was going through the forms online but a few phone calls to the DSS helpdesk were answered promptly and clarified things, so all in all it was a pretty painless process."
Tony, EPA Donor
"It's important people realise that this is not something that is beyond them. You just
need the self-confidence to go through the forms and navigate a process that is very
straightforward"
Aileen, EPA Donor