‘These eligibility regulation changes undermine one of the Care Act’s key aims’

Final regulations for the proposed national threshold published today
Secondly, the activity of ‘cleaning and maintenance of one’s home’ that was included in drafts has now morphed into being able to ‘maintain a habitable home environment’. That’s true for the carers’ own separate criteria as well. In a similar vein, ‘getting up and dressed’ has been replaced by ‘being appropriately clothed’.

Thirdly, one has to manifest inability in ‘two or more’ of the ‘outcomes’ on the list. There is no obvious steer as to what a council should do with a person who presents with just ONE, but highly significant, area of inability.

The ‘positives’

Within this, I acknowledge that:

1. the underlying cause of the inability can now merely relate to or arise from mental or physical impairment or illness, not just be directly ’caused’ by those things, so this is good for people with substance abuse issues and issues not culturally seen as mental impairments;
2. the extended definition of what constitutes someone being ‘unable’ to meet an outcome has been kept in, still allowing for people to assert need even though they can achieve the activity albeit with difficulty;
3. difficulty with developing relationships, as well as maintaining them, has been allowed for, and trips to medical appointments have now been excluded, no doubt as the responsibility of the NHS, for those not able to get there themselves.

The impact on carers

But overall, the changes described above risk undermining the economically rational presumed policy behind the Act: to incentivise informal carers to do much more of the valuable support, and willingly, by making them eligible for actual money to spend on their own housework and childcare and make up for their doing, for free, the much more expensive support, like night-sitting.

The new formulation effectively obliges that army of carers out there to carry on doing domestic support for their relatives and leaves them ineligible for support or money for their own household’s backfilling. This seems incredible, particular if a political party wants the woman’s vote coming up to a general election.