Top Up Fees Again!

[BeckHux]

I've posted on this before, but the latest is that the only home we've been offered (which I'm arguing doesn't meet Dad's needs due to it being too far away) required a top up of £100 pw.

As I now know that the LA can't ask for a top up UNLESS it has offered a home which will accept their usual fee, we said no to it. Miraculously there was no question, the LA simply offered to increase their payment - pointless as we're refusing it, BUT it made me wonder how many people have been in this situation and simply paid the top up fee.

If I hadn't known that we were not liable to this charge as we had not been offered a cheaper home we would probably have agreed to pay it.

Does this routinely happen?

 

[Saffie]

As we've discussed before, it has to me. I was led to believe it wss usual and have agreed £200 a week. however, after getting involved in your other thread, I'm going to suggest I don't.

 

[BeckHux]

I can't believe that they think they can get away with it. They obviously realise they have no enforcement otherwise they wouldn't have agreed to pay it themselves so quickly.

Good luck Saffie!

 

[lin1]

Though I have no experience with this
just from what ive read on here, it seems to be quite common.

Thankfully we have some very knowledgeable people on TP who have done research, from which we all benefit

Good for your for saying no

 

[JPG1]

Well done, BeckHux!

Well done you, BeckHux, for upstanding yourself!!

Does this routinely happen?

Sorry to say it does happen far too often, and far too many people have been 'swallowed' into it, innocently in some cases, but following rubbish advice in others.

Word is beginning to spread about the illegality, immorality and inhumanity of such demands.

I'm delighted you've managed to deal with it in the right way.

Saffie's turn next to turn the demand on its head and send it back where it came from! Whether it's £50 a week or £200 a week, it's a very weak game being played by some authorities. They should know better. Good luck Saffie!

 

[BeckHux]

Thank you JPG1!!

We are now battling the social worker regarding the proposed placement of Dad too far away. Just spoken to an adviser at Counsel & Care who was excellent.

She advised me that the £500 pw the LA had decided was a suitable amount for Dad's needs is way too low. Also the informal email complaint I have sent to the social worker to pass on to her manager contained everything I needed to include to back up the argument that he will be isolated should they place him so far away and that as his social need will not be met they have to increase this amount and place him in a nearer home, where there are vacancies!

When I spoke to Dad's social worker she insinuated that we should be happy with any home that could care for Dad regardless of the distance and that if it was her father she would visit him wherever he was!!!!

Would she want to take a 4 hour round bus trip with 6 changes 5 times a week?? That is what Mum would have to do to keep visiting Dad as often as she is now while he is hospital, as when her income is reduced due to Dad's care contribution she wouldn't be able to afford the fuel!! Neither my sisters nor I live near to Mum either.

Aargh!! Fingers crossed my informal complaint works, apparently if it doesn't I need to hit them with a formal complaint immediately.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant, I thought social workers were supposed to be professionals!

 

[JPG1]

She advised me that the £500 pw the LA had decided was a suitable amount for Dad's needs is way too low.

Agreed! There aren't many care homes priced at that range, so someone's trying it on!

Fingers crossed my informal complaint works, apparently if it doesn't I need to hit them with a formal complaint immediately.

Yep, that's definitely the way to do it. Counsel & Care are good!

I thought social workers were supposed to be professionals!

They are supposed to be professionals. And part of their job is also to care about the other members of the family affected by x, y, or z! So that definitely includes your Mum .... not to mention you, of course, because you'll be the one to pick up the pieces if your Mum's stressed out.

 

[BeckHux]

There is a link to the Counsel and Care - Care Home Handbook on the ACS Social Care webpage on my parents' county council website.

Everything I quoted to the social worker regaring unmet needs, top ups etc., is in that handbook as well as elsewhere. She seemed to have absolutely no knowledge of what I was talking about.

I am a public sector worker and work hard at my job - it is easy to see, after my encounter with this person, how those in the public sector get such a bad name when it comes to professionalism.

 

[Bob S]

It makes you wonder about the legality of top ups when section 147 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 has repealed the section of the National Assistance Act which allowed local authorities to pursue liable relatives for any costs they incurred in the care of an individual.

 

[BeckHux]

Here's a link to an article which states when top-ups are illegal. Unless you CHOOSE a more expensive home over a home which is available at the USUAL rate the LA pay you should never pay a top up. However the cheaper home MUST meet all of the assessed person's needs.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/pensions/article.html?in_article_id=419136&in_page_id=6

 

[Saffie]

Thanks for the link - I've read and printed the article for reference.

 

[JPG1]

I think this may be the Counsel & Care "Care Home Handbook" you were mentioning, BeckHux:

http://www.counselandcare.org.uk/pdf/care-home-handbook

Another thing that some people (perhaps even including professional social workers!!) misunderstand is about the local authority's 'rate'.

Some people take that to mean that a local authority has a fixed and almost un-variable rate that it is willing to pay for care home care, but that is not the case. A local authority has to vary any rate "according to the assessed needs" of each and every individual.

 

[BeckHux]

Absolutely, everyone's 'rate' is different depending on their needs.

Here is another other link to a factsheet on Counsel & Care's website

http://www.counselandcare.org.uk/finding-and-paying-for-a-care-home

Their advice number is 0845 300 7585, then will then book an appt for you with an adviser, I have to say that the one I called was excellent.

 

[BeckHux]

And yes, that is the handbook I mentioned JPG1, it's really informative.

 

[BeckHux]

I can't believe the phone call I've just had with my Mum. Mum went to see Dad today and the social worker was there.

She told Mum that the home we said was too far away he couldn't go to anyway as the LA wouldn't fund him there due to the £100 top up. So back to brokerage again!! Yes I wanted this outcome, BUT they are not going to find a home that will take him for £500!!! Obviously his care plan isn't detailed enough to include all of his needs which will not set his level of funding high enough.

She also said to my Mum that if Dad stayed on the ward much longer he would end up like another of the patients on there who has been there for 3 years as no home will take him, and he requires one-to-one care. She even said he would 'catch' the illnesses off him!!!!!

Formal complaint, letter to MP, local press here we come I think!

Wine required!

 

[BeckHux]

Update - horrifying lack of professionalism from social worker!

Meant to put a new title on the last post!

 

[Saffie]

Well, I've tried with the SW. I told her that I was really worried about how I was going to manage to pay the £200 per week top up fees - once the initial few weeks self-funding from the chalet sale - is over,especially as I'd heard (here) that they increased annually. She agreed and said that the last thing they wanted was for me to be in that position.

Solution - the only one, given that a shared room , even if one is available, would not really be suitable as he has a problem with communication (my argument!)- place my husband in a LA nursing home. No suggestion of 'don't worry, we'll make up the difference' at all. Mention of another home, 'but that's the same topup rate' as the one quite near that has agreed to take him.

I did quite like the 2 LA homes I visited some weeks ago after the SW said she had placed his name on their list but surely, as I said I would pay a topup fee but just not so great a one, there should be other options. I mean, it's not as if we are asking for something for nothing, is it? I will be handing over a large chunk of money in exchange for the SS funding when it happens as is the case with most husbands/wives I should think.

I also mentioned the chalet not being a second home issue - but I think that's a different thread!!! Getting very confused - arrows darting into my brain from different directions!!!

 

[nocturne]

When I spoke to Dad's social worker she insinuated that we should be happy with any home that could care for Dad regardless of the distance and that if it was her father she would visit him wherever he was!!!!

Sounds like mum's social worker who thought a home which involved me in 3 buses or a train and 2 buses and a journey of 2 hours each way was better than a home 10 minutes away by bus! His argument was slightly different. He said why did I need to visit more than once a week or even once a month as mum would not remember I had been there!

You are doing a great job fighting for what you want for your Dad. I wish you lots of luck. Incidentally Mum is in the home I wanted not her SW and it has proved to be a great success!

Jan

 

[branwen]

I've just been clearing out some care home brochures I got last year (non-emi so no good) and one states right at the front "schedule of fees - Short stay £x/per wk, Long stay £y/per wk, Top up fees £90.00 per week". ie already fixed with no assessment of means of contributor to pay - and no mention of local authority involvement. It then goes on to say "Most homes now charge a top-up fee in addition to the fees". Without knowing any better, reading that, I would simply be led to believe that any home my parents lived in would charge me that extra as a matter of course and I would have no choice but to pay up. (I'm an only child, single, with TWO parents likely to need EMI care in the near future. They will be self-funding initially and in an area with very few homes, the choice will be between an extremely expensive, nice one and a horrible cheaper one - so it will be the expensive one. I simply could not afford to pay those sorts of fees x2, on my income when they run out of money and even knowing some of the issues, I'll still find it difficult to stand up to that sort of "this is the way it is" certainty)