| When a person requires 2:1 support in the community, can one of them be a family member if no support worker is available? |
Nobody can stop a person helping another person access the community, other than with an injunction from the Court of Protection. Or without a finding of contempt of Court if there’s a CoP order for deprivation of liberty in the community or a DoLS authorisation in a care home.
We do not think, however, that you mean to ask whether the person CAN be one of the team if they are a family member.
We think you mean to ask whether the council or ICB funding the package can or SHOULD treat a family member as one of the team when care planning.
Counting them would mean that the budget for paid input was lower than it would be if the family member was not willing to help out.
Not counting them would mean a higher budget had been funded, but if the council or the ICB is funding the package and commissioning, then the inability of the care provider to find two members of staff to honour the contract, would be a breach of the care plan.
That is a wrong, which the funder cannot evade by contracting the service out.
It’s one which MIGHT BE able to be mitigated and waived by an agreement on the part of the family member and the commissioner for the family member to stand in.
The funder cannot ALLOW that unless they know the family member to be a) willing and b) objectively capable – ie that the family member is competent to take the place of the support worker, who will usually have been a registered care worker and thus trained to some formal degree.
If the person in charge of the package is the person or a person’s Authorised Person where the individual lacks capacity to have a direct payment (or personal health budget for CHC status) and is thus commissioning their own care, then THEY are the ones who should be holding a support / care provider to account for not having the staff.
In a situation where the provider shrugs its corporate shoulders, the person in charge of delivering on the care plan for which the funding has been provided needs to go back to the funder and ask for permission for the family member who could help to be paid from the budget, IF the person wanting to help out lives in the same household as the person being funded. This is because there is a presumption against payment out of the budget for close relatives living in the same household in the regulations governing both council Care Act care packages AND ICB continuing NHS health care packages.
So there’s no crystal clear answer, because it all depends, but the principles above should help.