Case Study: Care Act 2014 – Need or Preference to Stay at Home?
Summary
How a Community Care lawyer in Brighton challenged a local authority to secure increased social services’ funding for a care at home package.
The situation
Mrs Wilson, aged 82, has lived at home in the Midlands for over 50 years. Her husband died 15 years ago. She has dementia. She was self-funding her live-in care at home from income and from savings. Her savings are now below £23,250 which means that she qualifies for social care funding towards her care costs.
Mrs Wilson’s live-in care costs £1100per week. Her sons asked Social Services for a care needs assessment and a financial assessment as soon as Mrs Wilson’s savings dropped below the £23,250 means-testing threshold. The social worker concluded that Mrs Wilson had a need for residential care and a preference to stay at home. Social services said that they would fund her care at home up to the amount that they would pay for a care home: £890 per week.
Mrs Wilson & her family did not agree that she should give up her home to go to a care home. The sons feel that it is vital to Mrs Wilson’s well-being that she can retain independent living in the community and they fear that she would just “give up and die” if made to move to a care home. Mrs Wilson was also very unhappy with the Council’s decision. Her sons tried to get Social Services to change their position but were told to pay the difference of £210 a week as a top-up themselves to keep her at home.
Mrs Wilson’s sons approached Cate Searle for help to keep their mother at home.
What Martin Searle Solicitors did
Cate asked the Council for copies of Mrs Wilson’s Care and Support assessments and found that the assessments were contradictory and did not recognise the full extent of Mrs Wilson’s need for support.
The assessments included statements such as “Mrs Wilson suffers from macular degeneration and glaucoma so that any change of environment will be more threatening for her” and the social worker noted that she was “very vocal about her wish to remain at home”.
One assessment included the comment that Mrs Wilson “definitely needs a carer around 24 hours a day…allowing her to live life as independently within the constraints of lack of capacity…and that she benefits from having one carer and becomes agitated and confused with lots of carers”. She also had a very low tolerance for noise and found it difficult to be in a space with more than two or three other people.
Cate used these assessments to make the case to the Local Authority that Mrs Wilson had a need not a preference to remain in her own home and that her health and well-being would suffer should she be forced to move into a care home.
The result
The Local Authority did not agree that Mrs Wilson has a need to live in her own home and to be cared for by a live-in carer. However, they agreed that they had previously under-assessed her needs. Whilst they were not willing to fund the whole £1,110 per week cost of the live-in carer, the local authority agreed to increase their weekly contribution to £1,000 per week.
Mrs Wilson’s sons were satisfied with this compromise and agreed to contribute £50 each a week to make up the difference between the local authority funding and the true cost of Mrs Wilson’s care at home.
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