HOW TO UNDERSTAND THE CARE ACT, AND MAKE IT WORK FOR YOU!
Care Act Conundrums – a series of 12 webinars from CASCAIDr, for the purposes of public and professional education about people’s legal rights to care and support.
For adult service users, families, carers, care providers and professionals
Our Purpose
Do you want to know more about the scope for real challenge and negotiation under the Care Act – and about all the difficult or ambiguous bits that are stopping people from getting proper care packages signed off?
Understanding how law works in this field is within your reach, with CASCAIDr’s 2019 series of 12 Care Act Webinars, each one 55 mins/1hr max.
Adult service users, family members and carers
Get to grips with the Care Act 2014 and discover how it empowers you to take control of your own wellbeing. CASCAIDr’s Care Act Webinars focus on eligibility, assessment and advocacy, care planning, sufficient budgets, due process rights, direct payments, choice and charges, plus lots more.
Care providers and care professionals
The Care Act presents complex public law dilemmas which can be tricky to navigate, whatever your level of professional experience. CASCAIDr’s webinars will enhance your legal understanding and if you work in the sector, they’ll help you build up your own professional development record. Participation certificates can be created for your portfolio.
How much does it cost?
Each Webinar costs £15.
You can save nearly over 15% on the series of 12 by opting in to CASCAIDr’s annual BASIC membership for £155. Basic Membership offers other advantages too, including access to the Q&A part of CASCAIDr’s health and care law database for a whole year. For an invoice, contact leeforster@cascaidr.org.uk
Any organisation wanting to buy a private webinar on any of the topics listed need only ask on leeforster@cascaidr.org.uk – our private webinar fees start at £200 depending on your status.
| Subject | Content | Purchase |
| Assessment and Advocacy Rules | What makes an assessment lawful? Is a trio of short ‘conversations’ legally enough? Can councils start off saying ‘We don’t DO or PAY for x, y or z any longer’? What are the rules around advocacy and a council’s obligation to involve relatives of individuals who lack the mental capacity? Who can consent to person’s information being disclosed to a third party if the individual lacks capacity? Can it be refused? | To purchase a recording of this session, click below |
| Eligibility Rules | How do social work staff make eligibility decisions about ‘achieving’ or ‘inability to achieve’ at the Care Act domains when considering individuals’ eligibility? How is eligibility for funding or services affected if a person’s needs are already being met by existing informal support? Or could be, maybe, from community based resources? | To purchase a recording of this session, click below |
| Carers’ rights and their role in delivering choice | What is the difference between ordinary familial love and affection and something that counts as support? We’ll focus on issues relating to informal care, Carers’ Allowance and the support network’s ability or willingness to continue to help the council. | To purchase a recording of this session, click below |
| The Care Planning rules | We’ll consider whether care plans containing NOTHING, on the basis that ‘stuff out there’ ‘could’ work to meet needs, are lawful. And sometimes Care Act plans are missing, sometimes they take forever to appear, or don’t come even close to meeting a person’s needs. We’ll focus on what to do about that. And what happens when plans fail to take account of a person’s cognitive impairments, or of the real rate needed to purchase appropriate care services? | To purchase a recording of this session, click below |
| Reviews and Revisions Rules | Looking at justified cuts – and unjustified cuts to budgets, provision or services – and at cuts and moves caused by closure or CQC registration changes – plus the legally required processes involved in reviewing and updating a Care Act care plan. | To purchase a recording of this session, click below |
| The charging system | We’ll put the spotlight on disability-related expenditure from an individual’s own funds, and at other topics, such as housing costs, equity release funds, deprivation of assets and whether or not a DLA/PIP mobility component is really there to be spent on private transport arrangements! | To purchase a recording of this session, click below |
| Direct Payments and Health Budgets | Considering controversial issues such as insistence that an individual has a ‘managed account’ either in-house or from a provider of the statutory body’s choice. Also, capacity, Authorised Persons, employment and the use of close relatives in the same household, to do the work covered by the Direct Payment or Personal Health Budget. | To purchase a recording of this session, click below |
| Supported Living pros and cons | Forewarned is forearmed! Are budgets based on commissioners’ assumed ‘shared care’ savings even lawful? Plus, can a local authority insist that a person will only get a tenancy if they agree to accept that a current care provider going into the house to deliver the care is the right one for them? And how knowing a bit of Housing Law can actually help social workers to help YOU! | To purchase a recording of this session, click below |
| Continuing ordinary residence / ‘continuity’ rules | What on earth is intended by the garbled definition of ‘specified’ accommodation and what is the point when there is no social services duty to provide the housing? And how can the insistence in the Guidance that that sort of setting is the only way to meet the needs, even WORK, when there’s no national template for a Care Plan with that box in it!? Is it simply operating to stop people with high cost needs from really being able to move, as promised? | To purchase a recording of this session, click below |
| ‘Choice’ rules | Focusing on toxic top-ups and what to do about them when a council’s or Clinical Commissioning Group’s care home placement is needed, or one’s capital has now depleted after self-funding, and the social worker says to the family, ‘You’ll have to pay £100 a week extra to keep him here!’ Or, ‘You’ll have to pay extra in that posher out of county area, because going there is just a want and not a need, in our view!’. And what about top-ups for activities, the cost of care at home, when it’s a want and not a need? Are these legal? | To purchase a recording of this session, click below |
| S117 / Continuing Health Care status and adult social care | Getting to grips with the absence of any advocacy rights or eligibility criteria for people entitled to s117 services; the possibility of this status ending, by reference to unidentified triggers; and the relevance of local protocols as to how to split the cost of the joint duty. On CHC, focusing on new approaches to accessing a Checklist, the descriptors in the Decision Support Tool, and the odder parts of the Framework/Decision Support Tool, such as NOT counting managed needs as ‘still needs’ in quite the same way if they’re being managed by medication or ‘routine’ care inputs! | To purchase a recording of this session, click below |
| Complaints, legal remedies and compensation | We believe that these Webinars will have boosted your legal literacy, saved you money on lawyers, and empowered you to do something more constructive than simply using the Complaints System – but we’ll focus here on final tips about who to turn to for justice, legal remedies and compensation, including useful information about advocates’ reports, the role of Councils’ statutory Monitoring Officers and Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG)’s governance leads. | To purchase a recording of this session, click below |
| To purchase ALL of the above webinars at a discounted rate click below |
CASCAIDr’s 2019/20 Webinars are presented by CASCAIDr’s Trading Company and all revenue after its expenses have been covered, goes to the Charity.