‘Wicked issues’ with care funding cap Most of the ‘wicked issues’ related to the way the cap would work. To qualify, self-funders would have to be assessed by their authority as having eligible needs that are not met by a carer. The council would then provide them with a virtual ‘independent personal budget’, setting out what the council would spend on meeting their needs if it were obliged to meet them. Then, self-funders would have to have their needs regularly reviewed and the sum of annual independent personal budgets would accumulate in a ‘care account’ until the cap was reached. The changes would require councils to carry out 500,000 additional assessments of people with eligible needs in 2016-17 – and many others for people who are not eligible. Among questions asked by NCAS delegates were:- What kind of assessments will councils need to do on this new population, should people be able to assess their own needs and, if so, how should this work? What number and type of additional staff would councils need to meet the increased demand? Department of Health official Sebastian Habibi said that, even if it were affordable, there would not be enough qualified social workers to take on this responsibility. Will the assessment and care account process not create a massive new bureaucracy that may prove unnecessary for the many people who never reach the cap? Self-funder subsidy For pure self-funders – those who qualify for no means-tested support for their care costs – the level of their independent personal budget would be far less than the fee they paid for their care. This is because of the practice of care providers charging self-funders more than council-funded clients for the same service, as authorities use their buying power to force down rates. Delegates seemed particularly concerned about the fallout of this, asking questions such as:- Will people feel conned as the full costs of their care will not count towards the cap? Will providers be forced out of business as self-funders demand that they pay no more than their independent personal budget rate for care? Or will councils have to increase the amount they pay for funded clients to ensure the market for care remains viable? And if so will the DH meet these additional costs? Is the Department of Health engaging sufficiently with providers on the implications of the reforms for them? One delegate said providers in their area were not informed at all about the reforms.
Posted on: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 23:05:36 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015