A leading charity is to means-test the relatives of people living at its residential care homes to try to bridge a council funding gap.
Jewish Care says it faces an average 200-a-week shortfall between the funding provided by councils for care places and the costs.
Like most providers, it must routinely ask for third-party contributions. And if relatives are unable to find the cash, they are asked for financial information, which is combined with national data on household expenditure to calculate how much they can pay.
The charity’s director of communications, Justine Harris, said the shortfall was high because of the quality of care provided but nobody would be denied a service because of their income.
She added: “We have to turn to the families of those we are caring for. If they feel it’s out of their budget we ask for some basic financial information in order for us to assess if there’s a lower level of contribution that could be made.”
Philip Spiers, managing director of advice body Nursing Home Fees Agency, said it was the first time he had heard of the approach.
He suggested that Jewish Care should tell local authorities not to set an arbitrary rate if they could not buy care for that price in the area.
Relatives face care homes means test
November 30, 2005 in Residential care
More from Community Care
Related articles:
Job of the week
Featured jobs
Employer Zone
‘We want everyone to succeed in their career’
‘Solutions can’t be scripted here – you have to be creative’
Putting a team around the social worker to make a difference to families
How working in residential care enables staff to build one-on-one relationships with young people
‘We will always challenge ourselves to transform our services to improve outcomes for children and families’
Employer zone – showcasing a selection of the sector’s top recruiters
Community Care Inform
Latest stories
Bill to remove social work from councils in Scotland published
Unions seek 11% wage rise for Cafcass staff after chief’s warnings of social worker exodus
Ukraine: council heads raise safeguarding concerns as UK starts accepting unaccompanied children
National DoLs court launched to handle children’s deprivation of liberty cases
Comments are closed.