Ordinary residence, extraordinary mess

“Disabled people in residential care who want to live more independently are being prevented from doing so by funding wrangles between local authorities” – that’s taken from a piece I wrote three years ago, but since then little has changed.

The original piece is on the Guardian website: “Caught in a trap: disabled people can’t move out of care”, The Guardian October 2010

Here’s the mess: an individual’s “ordinary residence” is usually in his or her original local authority area, so if a council places someone in residential care outside the area, it remains financially responsible.

But when someone decides to move from that residential care in the new area into supported accommodation within the same (ie “new”) area, their original authority argues that it is no longer responsible for funding. However, the new authority – where the person actually lives – argues against funding someone not originally from the area. The result – limbo.

Confusing? Not really, what it boils down to is that councils are passing the buck over people’s care, effectively dictating where people should live - and all the while, individuals themselves appear to have no say. And quibbling over the care bill will only get worse as local authority cuts continue to bite.

I’ve been involved in a piece of work published today by social care organisation Voluntary Organisations Disability Group. The VODG has previously demanded action to resolve such ordinary residence dilemmas and, this time, it argues that the Care Bill offers ample opportunity to finally tackle the challenge. The new briefing, Ordinary residence, extraordinary mess, is available from the VODG website, with this post outlining how the situation has become “business as usual” in many areas.

One way forward, which the bill could accommodate, is strengthening the duty on local authorities to cooperate with providers and with each other to prevent delays in funding when people want to move from one care setting to another. The Epilepsy Society, for example, which contributed to today’s publication, estimates that in the last three years it has covered gaps in fees totalling £350,000 and “staff time involved in chasing fees over the same period has amounted to approximate 340 days across all departments including senior and service managers, finance and administrative staff”.

Here’s just one story from today’s publication, from a social care provider in central England:

“Joe moved out of residential care into supported living accommodation nearby, run by the same charity provider. Council A, where Joe is now ordinarily resident, is refusing to take over funding from Council B which had previously paid his out of county residential care fees. Some 14 months later, the social care provider (a medium sized charity) is owed nearly £50,000 from Council A for this one client. Members of the charity’s finance team chase Council A each week and include copies of previous correspondence and agreements. Council A continues to delay payments, giving the provider different reasons for not paying and passes the query around different council departments. The charity has continued to provide care and covered this gap in fees.”

While the powers-that-be seem unwilling to either acknowledge the scale of the problem or indeed have the confidence to untangle the mess, vulnerable people across the country remain in limbo, unable to move to the place of their choice because of bureaucratic wrangles.

As Anna McNaughton’s mother told me three years ago: “All Anna wants is to live in a suitable home – it’s a basic human need, not a luxury.” It’s a desperate situation that three years on, her words still have the same resonance.

Courtesy of Saba Salman at The Social Issue