LGO warns county council over adult care charging policy

The Local Government Ombudsmen has expressed concern that an adult care charging policy adopted by a county council could – even when properly applied – have lead to charging decisions that did not meet the objectives of relevant government guidance.

The concerns were raised by the Ombudsman, Dr Jane Martin, following an investigation into two complaints made against Northamptonshire County Council.

The LGO also warned that similar problems could still arise even though the local authority had adopted a new policy.

In her report, Dr Martin concluded that the local authority had failed to undertake regular reviews of care packages for two disabled service users.

She said Northamptonshire had failed to take the complainants’ circumstances fully into account in the charging assessments.

In one case, the council failed to properly assess the charge for community care services provided to a disabled man. This was because it took account of his disability-related income but not his disability-related expenditure. It also failed to review his care package properly, including when his brother gave up work to care for him.

Northamptonshire was also at fault in its handling of a disabled woman’s care package. According to the LGO, this included:

• Delay and a failure to properly review her care package through a face-to-face meeting
• Failure to properly assess her financial contribution, and
• Failure to ensure that her income remained above the minimum level of income support plus 25%.

Dr Martin found maladministration in both cases. She called on Northamptionshire to review the Fairer Contributions Policy 2010 to learn the lessons from this complaint. The authority had – in its submissions to the LGO – defended its use of a banded charging policy.

“In making this recommendation, I accept that the charges in this complaint were assessed under the council’s previous charging policy,” Dr Martin said. “However, the current Fairer Contributions Policy 2010 retains many of the same characteristics, including a banded charge which takes account of disability related income without individually assessing disability related expenditure or clearly indicating what allowance has been made for disability related expenditure.

“It appears that if the complainants had been assessed under the current policy then similar problems would have occurred.”

The LGO also said the council should ensure its care plan review procedures “provide for reviews to be undertaken by staff who are skilled in assessment, with adequate care management authority and who will be seen by service users to be reasonably independent of the service they are currently receiving”.

In relation to the first complaint, Dr Martin said Northamptonshire should undertake a further financial assessment “and as part of this consider exercising discretion to waive future charges, and consider building the exercise of such discretion into its charging policy”.

She also recommended that the council waive any charges that have accrued on the man’s account to date; pay him £500 for the failure to review his care package; and pay his brother (who complained on his behalf) £300.

In relation to the second complaint, the LGO said Northamptonshire should pay the disabled woman £1,650 for the failure to carry out a review and reassessment in a timely manner; pay her and her husband £250 to reflect their time and trouble in pursuing their complaint; and pay them a further £500 in recognition of the additional financial pressure that they faced when the charge was being applied.

Northamptonshire County Council has accepted the LGO’s recommendations.

A spokeswoman for the authority said: “Since the time of these complaints we have reviewed and updated our charging policy, following consultation with customers which saw 60% of respondents agree or strongly agree that the banded charging approach made it easy to understand how much they would be charged for services in a timely manner.

“We have also updated the wording on the relevant paperwork to make clear to everyone that they are entitled to a full financial assessment, and that we will honour whichever assessment has the lowest cost. Carers are also entitled to their own assessment to look at what help they may be entitled to.”

She added: “We will be reviewing the report to assess whether any further action needs to be taken in light of the recommendations.”