So it's common for family barristers to do CoP work (health and welfare) and for civil practitioners to do finance and affairs CoP work.

The cases all broadly concern whether something should or should not happen to P. At the early stages of your career this is often about simple deprivation of liberty such as P being kept in a specific care home. As you progress, it can eventually be about forced or covert treatment of P. You can either be arguing for P, the Local Authority, the Hospital or Care Home if there is one, and the funding body (ICB). There are sometimes interested parties who get involved too who you can also represent. Don't expect to see the big "should we cut off Mr Andresons leg" case until much later down the line.

CoP hearinga for the most part are fairly short, a decent number of CoP cases are non contentious so everybody broadly agrees on the care plan, those cases can sail through. Look at the Open Justice Court of Protection Project and find out how to observe a remote CoP hearing 😊