By Rosalind Hughes, founder, Just Caring Legal
Imagine the distress of spending the last months of your life on a frightening merry-go-round of inadequate nursing care and emergency hospital admissions. Meeting dozens of unfamiliar faces, often in sterile, strange surroundings. This is the reality for many vulnerable people due to a chaotic care assessment system that regularly minimises and ignores their care needs. A recent article in the Daily Telegraph highlighted the plight of 96-year-old Dorothy Havercroft. After the local authority failed to provide the long-term care Dorothy needed, she, like so many others, ended up being taken into hospital as an emergency. But that wasn’t the end of it. She spent a further seven months in and out of hospital. Three times she was discharged from hospital with no proper care in place to keep her safe.
After she died, Dorothy’s daughter worked out that 101 people had been involved in caring and treating for her. “Everyone who is meant to have helped has done harm,” she said. Not because they didn’t have the best of intentions. But because our chaotic care assessment system fails to protect those who are helpless and in need. As the authors of the Telegraph article, Damian Green and Jeremy Hunt, noted: “Britain is a kind country – but the care we give people like Dorothy is far from kind. In fact there are around 1.5 million people not getting the care they need.”
Care needs assessments are often not fit for purpose
Much of this is down to the inadequacy of many care needs assessments. One recent case sticks in my mind – mainly because of the honesty and decency of the care staff who blew the whistle. The case concerned a gentleman – my client’s uncle – who had recently come out of hospital. His ongoing care needs were high, complex and unpredictable. For example, he required expert one-to-one care to ensure he didn’t choke when being fed.
Care needs that clearly go beyond what social care is designed to provide should be covered by NHS Continuing Healthcare. NHS Continuing Healthcare is not means-tested – unlike local authority funding for social care. Eligibility for NHS Continuing Healthcare does not depend on your savings or whether you own property. It should be paid according to need, regardless of your personal assets or income. However, the scandal is that thousands of people do not get this funding, even if they are entitled to it. The process by which eligibility is assessed routinely fails to identify people with a genuine primary health need, who should receive the funding.
The social worker who assessed this gentleman drastically downplayed his condition and his care needs. So much so that the carers sent in to support him quickly realised they were putting his life in danger as they were not equipped to meet his needs safely. They were forced to tell the social worker that they could not in good conscience carry on providing care. The result? The gentleman had to be readmitted to hospital as there was no adequate care plan to meet his needs.
This is not just a waste of taxpayers’ money – it’s a waste of life
As Green and Hunt pointed out in the Telegraph article, hospital readmission for this reason is a colossal waste of public funds. (That acute hospital bed often costs three times as much as a care bed.) But it is also a distressing, often life-limiting experience for those involved. Many who struggle on with inadequate care end up in A&E – dehydrated, malnourished, ill or injured. These can be bewildering, noisy, scary places, especially for those with cognitive decline. Is this really the way we want our elderly, frail relatives to end their days? Passed from bed to gurney to ward and back again in an endless, panicky loop of unfamiliar faces? There has to be a better, more peaceful and dignified way.
Does this sound like someone you know?
Have you struggled to secure the properly funded care plan your relative so badly needs? Are they constantly under threat of hospital re-admission due to inadequate care? If so, please get in touch. Your relative may well be entitled to NHS Continuing Healthcare which should meet all the needs outlined in their care and support plan. With our niche expertise in this area, we can help you navigate the care assessment system and secure adequate care for your relative. So don’t wait for the next emergency to happen – call us today and let us see if we can help.