Council charges for care regardless if care is provided or not

Kayceejay4142

My father, who has dementia lives in an Anchor assisted living home with my mother in their contained flat. They receive minor support from an on site care provider, CERA which we pay for directly to CERA, but do not receive any direct support from our local council, South Tyneside. As he is viewed as 'eligible' for care by the council he has been sent a notice that he is going to be charged just over £88 PER WEEK for 'care', whether he is actually receiving any care or not from the council, just because he is 'eligible'. We are challenging this as the family believe this is outrageous having to pay such a huge sum for something he does not need (and may never need) at the moment.

Has anyone else experienced this and how do we challenge it?

HillStreetBlues

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6665443/council-charges-for-care-regardless-if-care-is-provided-or-not

Are you reading the letter correctly? Can you upload the letter with personal info redacted.

elsien

I would suggest that you may have misunderstood something here because you don’t pay for care that isn’t being provided. That is not how the system works.

Is this something to do with an additional payment for the place itself, on top of what you pay directly?
In my area, the only thing you would pay the assisted-living place for directly is if you have their meals. The care element payment still goes to the local authority and some of that charge is for the 24 hour support in case of emergencies. .

However, if you believe a mistake has been made the route to challenge it would be initially by the local authority complaints procedure. And then escalate to the ombudsman once you’ve had the response to the complaints if you are still not satisfied.

The first thing to clarify would be exactly what the payments are that he is making and what they cover and what the local authority is trying to add on top.

Keep_pedalling

LAs do not just send out things like this, they would not even be aware of any privately funded care. Has any financial assessment been done for any reason?

Grumpy_chap

I wondered whether this has been read the wrong way round and it is not that he will be charged whether he receives care or not, but the inverse, i.e. funds received whether the care is received or not simply because of being eligible.

I was really thinking about Attendance Allowance which I understand operates on that basis, EXCEPT, the OP mentioned the sum of £88 per week and I understand that AA is either £76.70 per week or £114.60 per week. I further understand that is two fixed binary levels of payment, not upper and lower bounds of the payment amount.

Can the OP share a redacted version of EXACTLY what the letter says?