Just had a call from the charity who manage our direct payments for care for my husband which has left me incandescent. We've only just been granted 3 hours per week after a bureaucratic rigmarole with social services who deemed we were not eligible for anything more because my husband 'is not far gone enough' (the words of the social worker not mine - I almost put in a complaint at that point about offensive language). Basically he needs help getting around to stop him getting lost and to enable him to carry on doing things he enjoys whilst I am at work, but he doesn't currently need help with washing, dressing, feeding himself, toileting etc.
This was then handed over to the charity to put in place. We opted to use the money for the three hours towards paying for care from our existing private provider. We are currently paying for 10 hours per week privately to support my husband to be able to get out and about when I am at work during the week - basically without a carer with him he would get lost. Our other option was to employ someone ourselves - which the charity would support us to do, but it seemed a lot of work to put that in place for 3 hours per week.
Having put this in place, Social Services pay £11 per hour and we are charged £20 per hour by the care company so I top up the difference in addition to the 10 hours per week I am already paying for, which is fine.
However the charity rang me up today and asked me how I wanted to pay my 'care contribution' - something which has never been mentioned before. They explained that this is different to the top up that I am already paying. They said I needed to pay £60 per week which is the maximum we can be asked to pay for care in Wales, and Social Services then cover anything above this. I don't understand this: I am already paying for 10 hours per week of care which costs approx £200 per week privately so why am I being asked to pay another £60? When I said this, the person on the phone conceded that maybe direct payments were not the best route for us because my husband is only getting 3 hours care per week (which was actually intended as respite for me) so it wouldn't make financial sense. There seems to be some loophole which I didn't understand whereby if someone is getting less than 6 hours per week of care via Social Services the £60 maximum cost does not apply if we are self funding. She totally confused me.
At the end of the day its not a massive amount of money in the overall scheme of things. We would be self-funding for care anyway as we have too much in savings, but I am just so furious that they've wasted all this time and energy putting this in place only to then turn around and tell us that we can't have it. And I still don't understand how the system works!
This was then handed over to the charity to put in place. We opted to use the money for the three hours towards paying for care from our existing private provider. We are currently paying for 10 hours per week privately to support my husband to be able to get out and about when I am at work during the week - basically without a carer with him he would get lost. Our other option was to employ someone ourselves - which the charity would support us to do, but it seemed a lot of work to put that in place for 3 hours per week.
Having put this in place, Social Services pay £11 per hour and we are charged £20 per hour by the care company so I top up the difference in addition to the 10 hours per week I am already paying for, which is fine.
However the charity rang me up today and asked me how I wanted to pay my 'care contribution' - something which has never been mentioned before. They explained that this is different to the top up that I am already paying. They said I needed to pay £60 per week which is the maximum we can be asked to pay for care in Wales, and Social Services then cover anything above this. I don't understand this: I am already paying for 10 hours per week of care which costs approx £200 per week privately so why am I being asked to pay another £60? When I said this, the person on the phone conceded that maybe direct payments were not the best route for us because my husband is only getting 3 hours care per week (which was actually intended as respite for me) so it wouldn't make financial sense. There seems to be some loophole which I didn't understand whereby if someone is getting less than 6 hours per week of care via Social Services the £60 maximum cost does not apply if we are self funding. She totally confused me.
At the end of the day its not a massive amount of money in the overall scheme of things. We would be self-funding for care anyway as we have too much in savings, but I am just so furious that they've wasted all this time and energy putting this in place only to then turn around and tell us that we can't have it. And I still don't understand how the system works!
