Social care financial assessment - help for my brother re. care and equipment
Hello, please forgive the long and complicated post - but any advice would be really helpful!
My brother has been in hospital for 2 months as he was very seriously ill. He has impaired mobility, which means that he can hardly walk, and has severe gout in his hands also, plus a host of other medical issues that need constant attention, including severe eczema that needs cleaning and bandaging regularly.
He works as a freelance consultant, which means that clients come to see him in his home office. He is married with a 5-year-old daughter.
He part-owns a 1-bed flat together with our mother but this is not suitable for him and his wife and child to live in, so he uses the income from this to pay for a rental home.
He has now been assessed as medically OK to return home, however he has greater needs for both care and equipment than when he went into hospital. His wife was his official carer, however prior to him going into hospital she had been struggling to cope and both care and food being prepared for him were unreliable before he went in.
Some time before this, he had been receiving extra care under the scheme that was offered during the pandemic, however when this was stopped, he could not afford to pay for the care himself.
He undertook a financial assessment with the local authority, however they refused to pay for his care, stating that because he part-owns the flat with my mother, they are counting this as 'capital', so they have assessed him as able to pay for the care himself.
However, as he needs the income from the flat to pay for his rent, it is not actually the case that he can pay for his care. He challenged the decision twice, however the LA refused to budge, and he was left unable to have care, which led to him neglecting himself - he was unable to take care of his eczema and couldn't manage self-cleaning and preparing food by himself, which I believe partly led to him ending up in hospital.
He now needs a minimum of 2 care visits per day to help with self-cleaning, dressing and food preparation. He is now scared to go upstairs to bed but his landlord won't agree to provide a stair lift, so the OT and social worker have advised that the best way for him to move forward quickly would be to have a bed in his office, which could be potentially provided by the LA and NHS. He has agreed this in principle, however he is only willing to have a chairbed that can fold back to a chair, in order that he can continue receiving clients.
However, the OT has told him that if he wants to be discharged sooner he should agree to have a hospital bed, however this will not fit in the office unless he removes important shelves with books that he needs for his work. Also, he doesn't want a bed in his office due to how unprofessional this might look to clients.
I am currently helping do a financial assessment again to submit to the LA, and have spoken extensively with the OT at the hospital as well as his social worker. However, the process is taking a long time and he is desperate to return to work as the longer he remains in hospital the less income he will receive from work, and he is also worried that the longer he takes to get back to work, there will be a higher risk of him losing clients.
We are also both very worried that the LA will come back with the same answer regarding his 'capital' as before and thus will refuse to offer him enough care, and also that he will be put under pressure to accept a bed that is not suitable for his needs, with the NHS/LA both putting pressure on him to accept a situation that will not work in the longer term and, if care is not provided to him, could have a serious impact on his health and life expectancy.
I would be very grateful for any thoughts or advice on his rights in respect of the above, in order to know how to advocate effectively on my brother's behalf.
Many thanks in advance.
