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The Inherent Jurisdiction of the High Court (the IJ) is used in safeguarding adults work to protect “vulnerable adults” whose autonomy is compromised but who have mental capacity as defined by the Mental Capacity Act 2005. Safeguarding Adult Reviews (SARs) frequently call on practitioners to develop legal literacy, including regarding the IJ. This study aims to explore and discuss how the IJ is presented in SARs and argues that there are systemic problems beyond legal literacy to consider in this area.

Relevant SARs (n = 29) were located through the National Network of Safeguarding Adult Board Chair’s library. These were thematically analysed to identify patterns regarding how the IJ is covered in these documents.

The reviews converged around specific experiential clusters (familial and domestic abuse, community-based exploitation and self-neglect). They entailed accounts of complex mental capacity issues and raised concerns about legal literacy. It was common to find situations where many other avenues for intervention had been exhausted and the IJ was proposed as a measure of last resort. The discussion of the IJ in SARs occasionally differs from prevailing legal accounts of its application, particularly regarding self-neglect and situations where a third party is not exerting coercion or control. The authors close the study with a discussion about legal literacy.

The IJ is an evolving area of law, and practitioners may therefore struggle to grasp its applicability. SARs are important resources for practitioners to learn lessons concerning this less commonly used legal mechanism. As a result, independent reviewers should be cautious about how they frame this legal remedy and consider whether this really is a case of “legal literacy”.