People's ability to make decisions may be impaired for a wide range of reasons, including by mental health problems and learning disabilities. Individual autonomy, the ability to make decisions about our own lives, is a fundamental tenet of democratic societies. This has been reinforced by laws governing substitute and supported decision making and most significantly by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). Article 12 of the UNCRPD requires everyone to have equal recognition before the law and, to achieve this, the necessary support and safeguards must be available. There has been considerable debate about the important theoretical and philosophical issues involved and growing research about the practice complexities of supporting and assessing decision making ability or mental capacity. This article aims to present some of the key components of the support and assessment process to inform further service development and training in this area. The key components were identified as part of a qualitative, participatory research project which explored the decision making experiences of people with mental health problems and/or learning disabilities. The conventional approach to the assessment of capacity is to consider four main components, whether the person is able to: understand, retain, use and weigh, and communicate the information needed to make the decision at that time. The findings from this research study suggest that people generally don't usually talk about their experiences of decision making in terms of these four components and approaches to supporting people to make decisions don't necessarily break the support down to explicitly address the assessment process. However, considering support for all aspects of the functional test may be helpful to ensure it is as comprehensive as possible. The challenges involved in providing effective support and assessing decision making ability are discussed and the article concludes with some of the implications for training, service development and practice.

人们的决策能力可能由于多种原因而受到损害，包括精神健康问题和学习障碍。个人自主权是我们决定自己生活的能力，这是民主社会的基本宗旨。有关替代和支持决策的法律对此予以了加强，最重要的是，《联合国残疾人权利公约》（UNCRPD）对此做出了规定。《联合国残疾人权利公约》第12条要求所有人在法律面前获得平等的承认，为此，必须提供必要的支持和保障。关于所涉及的重要理论和哲学问题，已经有相当多的辩论，关于支持和评估决策能力或智力能力的实践复杂性的研究也在不断发展。本文旨在介绍支持和评估过程的一些关键组成部分，以为该领域的进一步服务开发和培训提供信息。确定了关键组成部分，作为一项定性，参与性研究项目的一部分，该项目探讨了精神健康问题和/或学习障碍者的决策经验。评估能力的常规方法是考虑四个主要方面，即该人是否能够：理解，保留，使用和衡量并传达当时做出决定所需的信息。这项研究的发现表明，人们通常不会从这四个方面谈论他们的决策经验，而支持人们做出决策的方法通常不会。必须分解支持以明确解决评估过程。但是，考虑对功能测试的各个方面的支持可能有助于确保它尽可能全面。讨论了提供有效支持和评估决策能力所涉及的挑战，并在文章的结尾总结了对培训，服务开发和实践的一些启示。