This year, CASCAIDr’s theme for our annual Access to Justice fundraising walk is the rights gaps that is getting bigger and bigger in the world of adult social services. Please consider donating here. For those already aware of our work and why it matters – every donation is appreciated.
Today we’re highlighting the Care Plan Gap.
Recent examples of CASCAIDr work include people never having received a care plan, having no personal budget on the plan, and having no clarity about how a budget was arrived at – eg through an opaque panel process after a sympathetic front line worker had been very reassuring…
People need to know that the Council must provide a written Care Plan and personal budget that rationally meets eligible unmet needs.
So today’s focus is on the vast number of missing Care Act care and support plans that should be in the clutches of this country’s Care Act clients and their carers.
The Care Act says it’s the law (ie an absolute duty)
- that a care plan is written up after a care planning process properly involving the client -and anyone else with something important to contribute to the thinking about what will work best for a cost-effective price.
- And it’s the law that the council ensures that every single client has a copy of their plan.
- It’s the law that every care plan has an explicit figure in it (the personal budget) representing the council’s commitment to funding your care – and the sufficiency of that is subject to legal principles.
- It’s the law that any eligible carer has a written support plan too – that’s a plan and funding for meeting their own needs related to being a carer –
These rights just don’t happen in the real world. Councils know this, the Ombudsman knows this, and law firms know this, but nothing changes.
If there’s no plan, there’s no accountability for the reasonableness of the sum of money being allocated to the person, reasonableness in light of the range, depth and intensity of the person’s needs or the impact that they’re struggling with, by dint of their condition or disability.
There’s also no way of working out whether the rate per hour is enough to cover the market rate for care right now, whilst the sector is in crisis; and no way of working out what lovely free inputs are being assumed to be sustainable from family carers, at the end of their tethers. There’s no way of knowing whether the care planner has just focused on happy clappy outcomes and on so-called assets and strengths – free stuff in the community that the council doesn’t have to pay for, but which might not in fact be workable for the person – rather than on the council funding and services to which a person is legally entitled.
One solution to all of this is suggesting that the council should let the client and family get cracking with the care plan themselves – working out the timings for when care is most needed, for instance, according to the assessment document in which the eligible needs were identified, and making it clear in writing what a family carer IS prepared to do. Councils have the power to grant co-production care plan rights to the clients themselves. And that will save time for everyone.
The better thing to do though is to mention the case of Croydon and a person called P decided in November of last year where the council was excoriated by the Judge for its care planning failures. It’s a great case which sets out the extent of the council’s duties under the Care Act to deal in some detail with why what they’re suggesting meets needs will actually be sufficient to do so – rationally addressing the evidence, and being transparent about the market rate. The link to this case is here and CASCAIDr’s analysis of the case is here.
Every council’s principal social worker, head of adults’ services and each council’s Monitoring Officer needs to know that the local population knows more about clients’ legal rights than the staff do, frankly, if things are ever going to improve. If you get nowhere you can go to the Ombudsman for free and we can help you do that for a low cost charge.
CASCAIDr aims to help people go up that learning curve for themselves, but we need your support and your donations, now please, more than ever before.