Responsibility for community care is split between the NHS for nursing and councils for care. It covers services like care homes, home help, adaptation, day centres and meals on wheels. You may get services or cash to buy your own. With budget cuts the government is under pressure to say you do not need any or as much help or you do not live in their district. Councils sometimes forget they are your servant and imagine they are your master. Many patients say they feel “warehoused”.
You may need:
- Assessment and service provision
- To challenge a missing or inadequate community care assessment or care plan, or badly handled hospital discharge
- To prove ordinary residence to qualify for help
- To challenge funding or standards in a care home or home (“domicillary”) care
- To argue what the NHS is responsible for or who pays how much for it
- Housing if you are homeless
- Support for your carer
- Help with mental capacity, learning disability or autism
- Care and guardianship for mental health
- To challenge unreasonable charges or taking account of income instead of capital
There are special rules on matters like drugs, AIDs, disabled children and abuse of adults.
We can complaint to the council or Trust and then there is recourse to the Local Government Ombudsman or Health Service Ombudsman who can say what should have happened, or even a little known option of default power direction by the government, and ultimately judicial review, where a judge can say whether what happened was allowed.
