Community Care and charges

sueturnersmith

I have recently been assessed as having community care needs, and had a financial assessment recently.

I have just heard that I will need to pay £46.12 a week towards any care needs, which is based on my income only. They only take half my husband's and my expenses into account, even though my income is considerably more than his. He only gets carers allowance and a very small works pension, so I pay most of the food and household expenses. £46.12 towards my care needs is a lot more than I can afford!

I have no idea what the care needs will cover, as I have not had any care plan or details as yet, but believe they are looking at some form of home help, because the house is in a tip, and we also have occasional rat infestations. I am not able to deal with this myself, and my husband is not exactly the most domesticated of people (to put it mildly!)

What do I need to do? They want me to sign a direct debit for care charges for as yet unknown care which I can't really afford? I guess I will have to plod on living in this mess, which is dangerously unhygenic, or find some way to reduce my outgoings and take away costs of any sort of pleasure/leisure activites/hobbies in order to pay for this?

I own the house, but it is in a poor state of repair due to my illnesses.

bll78

How come they've not included your Husband? In my patch you can do it either with both your incomes and all housing costs included or just yours with half the costs included. Did they do a joint assessment with your carer (Husband) or just talk to you?

The next point is I'm pretty sure you don't have to have the care if you don't want it, although it sounds like you do want and need it.

sueturnersmith

I did mention that my husband's income was a lot less, but the assessor insisted that it had to be just my income. I get DLA HRM and HRC, which they added on to my income, except for the night care 'disregard'.

tomtontom

Is it just cleaning you need help with? If it is, it may be cheaper to pay someone yourself. Or if you can get someone to get it up to a decent standard, could you then get your husband to do more to help?

cattermole

bll78 wrote: »

How come they've not included your Husband? In my patch you can do it either with both your incomes and all housing costs included or just yours with half the costs included. Did they do a joint assessment with your carer (Husband) or just talk to you?

The next point is I'm pretty sure you don't have to have the care if you don't want it, although it sounds like you do want and need it.

I cannot see how this would fit in with Fairer charging guidance certain joint benefits like couples allowances and income support are automatically dis-regarded.

But yes you are not forced to receive the services.

cattermole

Firstly your husband's income is not taken into account because it is you that is receiving the care. If he was a high wage earner would you want his income taken into account? That is the rational behind it.

I've never heard before of a case where a financial assessment took place prior to a care package being agreed. But this is the maximum you would pay regardless of how much care you received and is less than the daytime DLA amount you receive.

It is also unusual for Social Services to provide cleaning services as this is not a direct care need and this is why people are paid DLA and AA in the first place to meet their Disability related expenditure.

They only take into account disability related expenditure so food and other sundry costs are not disability related expenditure.

I tend to agree if it is just cleaning you require for your needs (if your husband is meeting your personal care needs) then it would be cheaper to pay for a cleaner direct.

sueturnersmith

bll78 mentioned a joint assessment with my carer. In fact, as far as I'm aware, the only assessment we had was when someone telephoned my husband and asked lots of questions about his help with my care needs, although the letter about the community care charge did say that I had been assessed as needing community care.

I have had lots of visits from physios and occupational therapists, and they have installed grab handles, bath board and other aids. But I am not aware that I have had an actual assessment for care needs.

Someone from the council did come to help me complete a statement of finances, but this was my own finances, not joint.

The person who spoke to my husband about his help with managing my care needs rang back a while ago and ask what help he would like, and suggested a home help because health care professionals had mentioned that the house was in a mess.

I find it all very puzzling. If the person needing help is deemed to be my husband (the carer) then shouldn't the financial assessment been on his income, or on joint income?

cattermole

I was a bit unclear on whether they were referring to a Joint Assessment of Care Needs. They implied joint financial assessment which does not happen under Fairer charging.

If someone has an assessment of the their Care needs, yes the Carer is included more to establish what care they are providing/willing to provide and if there are any gaps in care that Social Services may have a duty to meet.

In addition a Carer can have a separate assessment of "their" needs.

I was thinking about the "cleaning" being a carer's need last night and it sounds from what you have described that yes Health Care professionals have made a referral to Social Services. That some kind of telephone assessment has been made of your Husband's Carer's needs. If it is his needs they are meeting then yes it would be on his income not yours, not jointly though.

How long ago did you have this Financial Assessment? As I said it is very unusual to have a Financial Assessment if you are not actually currently receiving any services and Social Services have not yet agreed to provide any services or a care plan produced.

When this person phoned back yesterday to speak to your husband who were they?

I suggest the best thing you can do is to ask for them to visit the house and explain properly what exactly is going on. It sounds to me that you both need assessments to establish exactly what both your needs are and a proper care plans drawn up before anything else happens.

I wouldn't sign the direct debit in any circumstances to pay for charging because it can result in automatic billing when there can say be weeks if you were away for example you received no care or he received no help with the cleaning. I would also telephone the Department that has sent you the Charging information and inform them that you don't know why you have received the notification as you are currently not in receipt of any services that are chargeable.

It is puzzling I agree.

bll78

cattermole wrote: »

I cannot see how this would fit in with Fairer charging guidance certain joint benefits like couples allowances and income support are automatically dis-regarded.

But yes you are not forced to receive the services.

In my area in Yorkshire, they let you choose whether you want you partners income included or not, because for people like the OP it makes sense to have him included for others who have high earning partners it does not.
As for the part on income support, that is definitely included locally. They do include certain parts of your DLA/PIP too. They do disregard wages though. Their rationale being that they don't want to discourage people working. I think our limit locally is quite high though, it is IS + 25% after income disregards for housing, council tax and disability related expenses.
I have to agree with Cattermole, a cleaner is not something they will provide, although SS locally explained that they will employ someone to help you clean i.e if you need someone to fetch and carry and spray the polish onto the duster thats fine, as long as they're enabling you to clean not doing it for you.
Can you do a search for the rules, I found them for my patch quite easily through google and costed it all up myself before the Finance team ever got in contact.

bll78

If it helps this is the copy and paste from ours rules, bear in mind that every areas is different, but it may help you explaining what you mean. If you are financially supporting your spouse surely this has to be taken into consideration?

Service User appears to be Main Recipient of Income or Holder of Assets

11.3.1 The Visiting Officer will attempt to identify cases where the service user is the main recipient of a couple’s income or main holder of the couple’s assets.
11.3.2 Where a service user appears to receive the majority of the couple’s joint income the visiting officer will offer him/her the opportunity to provide full details of the couple’s finances in order that an equitable agreement regarding charges can be reached.
11.3.3 If the service user chooses to be assessed as a single person and he/she receives an occupational, private or personal pensions or payment under a retirement annuity contracts up to 50% of this can be disregarded in favour of his/her spouse.
6.5.7 Where a service user lives with a spouse or partner but is financially assessed as a single person a Housing Allowance will be given to cover 50% of the couple’s total joint liability.
6.5.8 Where a service user lives with a spouse or partner and the financial assessment is calculated on the couple’s joint income and assets a Housing Allowance will be given to cover the whole of the couple’s total joint liability.

cattermole

They are from the fairer charging guidance so it is standard.

It applies really when the service user is the person with the largest income (not from benefits) and allocating of assets, housing allowances and is supporting the spouse..

They could apply those rules to this case but I doubt if it would make any difference. Because they are both on benefits apart from a small occupational pension which is the husbands.

Yes it can be a joint assessment so I explained that badly but it really only applies if the service user has the main income from non benefit sources. Any joint assets are automatically split 50/50. There also could be a situation where the non service user has assets which could be considered 50% the service users.

Any couples benefits are automatically dis-regarded in the calculation.