How do I get a new needs assessment done?

TNJJ

Registered User
May 7, 2019
2,967
0
cornwall
Thank you TNJJ. I will try not to break her out again until at least after the New Year than. However I took a few days off that week, and I'm looking for blankets that might be warm enough for an outside walk. I have already asked her carer to bring her own wheelchair down, it might be more comfortable then the NHS one.
I like that..Break her out.I know what you mean ,but it did make me smile :):D
 

Astrantia

New member
Apr 15, 2019
2
0
Hi all,

I asked the Social Services some time ago about getting a needs assessment done. They said they would only do a needs assessment once my mother's capital went under the capital treshold, but to feel free to contact them after my mother dropped below the capital threshold. My mother doesn't own the house she lives in, and her only incomes were lowest state pension and higher rate attendance allowance. I wrote to Social Services and asked about getting a needs assessment done as soon as my mother's savings went below the capital threshold, knowing that they like to take as much time as possible to get this done. Whilst waiting for a reply I applied for pension credit for my mother, and explained that to keep my mother's full time care going I needed to apply for pension credit to help towards it. Pension credit asked for bank statements going back 6 months, my mother has a few bank accounts, I don't like to leave too much in one account, ever. I sent the bank account statements by email, and they got back and not only agreed she was entitled to pension credit, but that they were willing to backdate from 3months previously, which really did help a lot.
So when Social services asked forthe past 6 months of bank statements, I thought that this would be a doddle, just sent the exact same statements over to them as I had to the Pension Office.

Social Services agreed to send me both a financial assessment and a needs assessment and since I work full time as a shop assistant, I had to swap my days off in order to have a day that would suit Social Services, they don't seem to have any time to do these things on Fridays or Saturdays or Sundays. We arranged a time that they would agree to and I managed to get by begging and pleading with my manager to change the rota just to suit them. I had sent the paperwork off to Social Services and managed to get an appointment for 2 weeks later to give them time to look through the bank statements. Just before they were supposed to come they sent an email stating that they had looked through the bank statments and had found that my mother's capital was £24,698.12 which of course is over the capital threshold, and they also stated that because of this, they had cancelled both my mothers financial assessment and her needs assessment. They also complained that I had used £3000 over 6 months out of my mother's money and wanted me to explain where all that money had gone to. I wrote back to that one and told them I would have to be a genius to have managed on £3000 over 6 months and they must have read all those bank statements incorrectly as well.

I'm pretty good and knowing what my mother's financial situation is, and therefore knew they had made some kind of mistake. I asked them for their figures, which to be fair they sent to me. I looked over where they had picked their figures found and discovered 2 major mistakes they had made. Unfortunately one of my mother's banks puts the newest figures at the top of the page and the oldest figures at the bottom of the page and my mother has 2 accounts with that one. I could then see that when the benefits officer reads the statements she reads the bottom line of the statement rather than the top which gives the balance. Looking at it further, this caused even more confusion because one of the statements with her main expenses is on a pdf file, and this was over 2 pages because of all the transactions, and it was obvious to me that she took the balance of the bottom of page one, failing to see the carer and the monthly daycare payout 2 days later. I pointed this out to them, and asked when they could now arrange a needs assessment since my mother by now urgently needs one, or at least I could do with some advice.

The case was then transferred over to the benefits officer manager, who stated after a week that she would need to see more bank statements from 12 months ago, which she would look over to see if my mother is entitled to have a needs assessment, and pointed out that she would be away for 11 days and wouldn't be able to look at them until she got back. I sent this out to her before she got back to the office and she left it a week until she received another email asking if the new information meant that I could now get a needs assessment for my mother, and then she asked for some of the payments to be explained, such as why my mother was paying money out to the HMRC and if this was going to continue, she also queried a plumbing bill, which she asked if this was a carer and if this was a weekly amount. I answered all her questions and a week later she sent out more questions, such as why 2 of the payments of money was coming out of one my mother's bank accounts, to which I had to reply that they were incoming payments since that's what FPI stands for, and she may have guessed this if she had looked at the previous balance before the payment went in as the balance went up by the exact amount of money as she was asking about. It is now yet another week later and I am now waiting for the next round of questions, which will possibly show yet again that the benefits manager is equally unable to read bank statements.

In the meanwhile my mother's carer and I have transferred my mother's bedroom into a bedroom/living area, since there has been 2 occasions we were unable to get my mother to stand up after sitting down, and we had to get an ambulance out to help, who whisked her away to hospital. Took xrays, the first hospital found nothing wrong with the xrays, and were going to send her back the next day as they had no transport, sometime after midnight however, I suspect because my mother woke up in the night and screamed out, they decided she had fracture and moved her to a small hospital over an hour away. Another problem with my mother is that she now finds it really difficult to get into or out of a car, and it can take up to an hour of struggling and I don't know who cries the most during this time, her or me, so later in the day when the little hospital managed to get a doctor to come down and have a look at her, so she could come home, it was apparently a fracture that would mend on its own given enough pain killers it took over an hour for us to get my mother into her carer's car. My mother was desperate to come home, the hospital seemed quite relieved that she was going, she had already in her small time there managed set one of the nurses into tears. The next hospital she went into a few days later didn't find any sign of a fracture, so I reckon for a 96 year old, she must have remarkable mending ability.

Every day it becomes more difficult to get my mother to stand up from bed and to go to bed after sitting on her armchair, she tries to get up, and she tries really hard, but somehow her legs seem to be seizing up, and as my mother is somewhat on the large size, she's too heavy to move if she is physically or mentally unable to move her legs, and her arms are getting weaker so when we hold on to her and try to get her to pull up, she screams in pain. The carer reckons a hoist might help, and maybe something she can stand on to help twizzle her round, but I would much rather get some kind of professional advice on this, rather than randomly buy experimental items of ebay and endanger my mother. I thought that if the social services could send someone out to do a needs test, than they could advise me on the safest equipment to buy and to let me know if they feel that her carer and myself could perhaps have some help in learning how to use the equipment, but until Social Services can learn how to read bank statements they refuse to send someone to do a needs assessment.

Now that my mother has to often be fed, she finds holding a spoon too taxing, though she's pretty good at finger food snacking, we always make sure she has fresh fruit cut up for her in front of her, she needs changing most of the time, and gets very upset when anyone tries to touch her to get her changed, the local care home would charge at least £950 a week, which would use my mother's savings up even faster since moving into a carehome, would mean she would lose her Attendance allowance, and her pension credit she now gets to top up her state pension. Social Services have ensured that it has taken over a month so far to even consider setting up a needs assessment because they always manage to find some bank statement they are suddenly unable to read, and even if they do, I will have to try and get the whole thing with work sorted out to get a relevant day off. I didn't ever have this many problems even when I was working full time and had 2 children.

All ideas would be lovely,

Thanks from Chrissie
 

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