If an informal carer has a carer’s support plan (even if called something wishy washy like a ‘conversation with carer’ instead, but it’s clear it’s meant to be a support plan), and in that support plan it says the person needs some specific things in order to be able to sustainably continue caring (for example, to be able to go to a particular exercise class, or to have 1-1 counselling), does this produce a statutory requirement on the council to provide or fund those things in the same way that a disabled adult’s support plan would?
Yes, in theory, it does. The government in its fanfare and fact sheets about the Act, and the statutory Guidance are very clear that the law in the Care Act is as much applicable to carers as it is to individuals in direct need – unless it otherwise says so.
The wording and architecture of the duty to meet carers’ support needs is the same as it is for those in direct need, and it is all based on public law principles and prior case law. That is, principles requiring rationality and the care plan being directly tied to the assessment of needs and eligibility in the first place. The duty owed to an eligible carer is mandatory, enforceable through legal proceedings, and individually owed. It’s not a target or general duty. The case law on the sufficiency of the budget for a person in direct need has long since established that there must be a rational nexus between the need, the finding of eligibility, the care planning and the signed off budget.
And if so, is it lawful for the council to provide a flat rate, standardised one-off monetary sum (like so many councils do) by way of a ‘carer’s personal budget’ to a person that has such a support plan, even though that sum has clearly not been calculated with any rational reference to the actual cost of the things identified as needed within it?
In practice, and thus in the real world, there is no case on that subject, that we know of, and no ombudsman’s report and finding of fault that we know of, either, specifically about a carer’s support budget. One can be sure that any council that was challenged by way of a judicial review would do a survey of all councils to see what the rest do by way of response to eligible carers, on the basis that they can’t all be wrong! They would do this in order to persuade the judge that there IS a difference which matters for interpretation of the duty, and it is this: that if the carer is still willing to go on caring, in light of what they’ve been funded with, then on that footing, since caring is a choice, it can’t be unreasonable to limit the budget in that regard, even if it doesn’t deliver the means to do the thing that matters so much to the carer.
That’s the danger of a judicial review.