reblogged from Independent Living News.
Paying family members to provide care
A recent judgement from the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman highlights one of the upsetting dilemmas faced by family carers.
A woman in Cornwall with significant care needs was left without care after the council decided she could not pay the daughter who lives with her to provide the care she needed. They judged that it could be provided by an external agency – but didn’t actually put any arrangements in place.
This meant that the daughter could only either leave her mother untended or continue caring without any pay.
Paid family care only in “exceptional circumstances”
The council said paid care could only be provided by a live-in family member in exceptional circumstances, where it could not be provided by an external agency.
In this case, the council believed that the mother’s care could be provided by an agency.
But the council did not put any alternative care support in place, so the daughter felt she had no choice but to provide significant unpaid care for her mother.
This meant she was unable to find paid work and left her without enough breaks to have her own social life or regular time off to relax.
Failure to assess needs of either party
When the Ombudsman investigated, they found the council to be at fault for stopping the mother’s direct payments without carrying out an assessment of her needs or a carer assessment for her daughter. They did not identify an agency that could take over the care provided by the daughter.
The council eventually reimbursed the daughter for some of the period in which she provided care. However, the council has not provided the mother with the support it accepts she needs since February 2019.
At the time of the initial investigation, it had not reinstated the direct payments, or even fully considered whether there were exceptional circumstances to do so.
Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, Michael King, said:
“Councils have a duty to ensure people’s personal budgets are spent appropriately, but they cannot simply leave people without the care and support they need while looking for alternative solutions.
“By failing to provide a suitable alternative, the daughter felt she was left with no other option than to provide the care herself, to her own detriment.
“I am pleased the council has now agreed to all of my recommendations, which should ensure other people in the county are not affected in a similar way.”
LGSCO remedies injustice and shares learning
The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s role is to remedy injustice and share learning from investigations to help improve services.
In this case the council has agreed to apologise to the woman and her daughter and pay the daughter an amount equivalent to that which she would have received had the council continued to pay her for the care she provided between January 2019 and February 2020.
It has also agreed to review the mother’s circumstances and decide if it should allow her a direct payment to pay her daughter to arrange care and pay the mother and daughter £500 each for the distress they have suffered.
The Ombudsman has the power to make recommendations to improve processes for the wider public. In this case the council has agreed to share with its staff the lessons learned about direct payments and the use of medical evidence.
