Help for my neighbour

elsien

Candycane19700 said:

A girl I went to school with has a daughter with very bad cerebral palsy. She is around 30.   She is unable to work (ever) but has recently moved into a flat of her own and has a team of carers.  I am presuming that this is all paid for by the LA..
Are the rules different when you are younger?  I was assuming my neighbour could also access that support.  I was going to get a social worker but I wanted to do some research first.

Younger people with disabilities are much more likely to be able to access 24 hour support. The benefits system is slightly different but also they are more setting out on a journey to independent (as in away from family) living whereas older people are at the other end of that spectrum where their support needs are only going to be increasing and probably heading towards nursing care as time goes on.
And purely from a resource point of view, with the number of older people in the population vs people with disabilities it’s just not affordable with the system we have now.
It is very unusual for an older person to be offered any more than 4 calls a day if they are being funded by the local authority. 

If your neighbour is below the self funding threshold, then the starting point would be for a Care Act needs assessment to be carried out to see what support she does need. But if she needs a high level of support it’s probably not going to be happening at home. 
If she had capacity to choose not to go to a card home then that would leave her struggling on with the more limited help that may be available,