This briefing document provides a short overview of some of the key points raised by both speakers and guests in the June 2022 London Specialist Advice Forum. Overview of the Social Care sector - There are good rights in social care but these are barricaded by policy and procedures (often unlawful) and local authority restrictions. This is creating an increasing need for people to know about their rights and have people who can hold their hands and take them through complex systems to access their rights.
- Report on homecare in 2021 suggested that;
- Almost 400,000 people were waiting for an assessment of needs.
- 1.5 million hours of commissioned care had not been provided due to lack of staff.
- The most recent report (May 2022) said the situation was 28% worse than 2021. A third of all people eligible (high standard to meet) for social care are not getting it.
- The Government has proposed a cap on social care costs, but this will not help disabled people in poverty, it will only help those who are relatively wealthy. This will increase the number of people coming forward to be assessed, but the system is already unable to assess all those currently waiting.
Impact on care cost on Covid 19 and services - Carers UK estimate that Covid caused an additional 4.5 million people to become unpaid carers. 64% of carers surveyed in 2020 were unable to take any breaks at all in the prior 6 months. The Health and Social Care Bill was designed to increase the speed of discharge from hospitals, and theGovernment impact assessment expected that this would increase the need for unpaid care. This creates a reduction in work hours and increase in associated costs.
- National Audit Office in 2021 said that 94% of Local Authorities have increased charging to disabled people, whilst reducing services. Even those on basic benefits will still be paying excessive amounts.
- Nearly all Local Authorities have dramatically increased charges they levy on disabled people, particularly those reliant on means-based benefits.
- Disabled people are caught in a triple bind. Failed by both the social care services and the ombudsmen. A lack of legal aid means many cannot access the ombudsman.
The need for agencies focussing on disability law - Cuts in legal aid means some areas aren’t covered at all – Disability Law Service runs a helpline to provide guidance on areas of law outside of Legal Aid. The benefits of early legal advice - to act and prevent negative outcomes.
- Pleasance and Balmer noted that people with lower legal capability are more likely to suffer adverse consequences e.g. stress-related ill health, loss of confidence and income, fear, physical and mental ill-health due to their legal problems (2014).
- The fundamental issue is that the advice sector is so small relative to the number of people who need assistance. DLS is a team of 13 advisors, other advice agencies are helping disabled people too.
Community Care Group - Lawyers working in the legal aid sector felt a need for a network to communicate with each other. Share referrals, capacity, and news. Chat to be able to discuss complex issues where needed, and possibly meetings with guest speakers.
- Possibility to involve the for-profit sector too. They are less likely to make money from legal help work, so may be keen to pass on more of these cases to the NFP sector.
Anyone interested in joining the Community Care Group can register their interest here.
This section of the briefing document provides a short overview of some of the key points raised by both speakers and guests in the April 2023 Community Care subgroup.
Aims and Objectives of the Community Care subgroup - Improve communication across the community care sector through meetings and digital communications.
- Enhance sustainability and efficiency through sharing of best practices, resources, and training opportunities.
- Support resilience of the community care advice sector through problem sharing and support.
- Identify emerging issues and inform the wider sector and policy stakeholders.
- Encourage warm referrals and sharing of caseloads to meet more needs.
- Develop pilot projects based on identified issues.
Our hopes of the subgroup - The Community Care Forum Subgroup aims to address the challenges and issues faced by community care practitioners through a dedicated platform for communication, collaboration, and sharing of resources.
- The forum will strive to improve the sustainability, efficiency, and resilience of the community care advice sector through knowledge sharing, and training opportunities.
- The launch of the subgroup in April 2023 marks an important milestone in addressing the needs of community care practitioners and promoting collaboration within the sector.
Access Social Care Presentation: Overview of Career Pathways in Community Care Report You can read more about Career Pathways into Community Care here
Findings of the report - The findings of this report show that there has been a massive decline in the provision of early legal help advice in community care. There has been around a 77% fall in the number of legal help cases taken on by law firms.
- What the report found was that the basic core community care work such as the right to assessment, challenging decisions within an assessment and getting care and support plans was not being done under Legal Help funding.
- Even though we found that the number of legal aid contracts has stayed stable with 74 contract holders- there are still a lot of providers who are not doing the Legal Help work.
Issues with other levels of funding - Many practitioners have said that they do not find it financially viable to take on cases which have a financial impact on firms.
- What we found was that people were turning to do Court of Protection work instead of the core community care work.
- It is our understanding that most if not all Court of Protection work goes straight onto a certificated case, so you do not need to do a means test and the certificate rate is paid hourly at a higher rate.
- That explains why the certificate cases have increased massively, people are not doing more judicial reviews, they are doing Court of Protection work.
- This is pivoting community care lawyers away from the work we see that needs to be done which is community care challenges.
Career Pathways - The effect of that is that you end up with practitioners who do not get the experience of doing Public Law work.
- They don’t get the experiences of understanding the details and insights of community care and its challenges.
- They don’t get to experience the core principles of public law and the making of a judicial review case and they end up having to split their time to do other aspects of law such as educational law or complex personal injury law work on the back of some knowledge of community care.
- This also means we don’t have sufficient people who are qualified as category supervisors because you must do a certain proportion of core community care work to meet those requirements.
- By restricting the Legal Help cases that people can take on, the impact further up the career chain is significant.
Access Social Care: Recommendations and Actions - One of the key things this project is looking at is trying to improve processes with the legal aid agency so that the constant barriers with the legal aid agency that we face on a day-to-day basis are reduced.
- Our project is looking to work with the legal aid agency to try and improve their caseworker knowledge on how community care works.
- We also need to look at the supervision criteria for community care practice and how we can get more community care supervisors.
- We are also conscious that practitioners get overwhelmed by vicarious trauma and the stress their clients are facing.
- Another aspect this project is looking at is the gaps in the community care career pathways and promote awareness of community care practice as a career choice.
- Working to establish a Community of Practice/Practitioner’s Association.
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