Social care eligibility criteria tighten

Councils are increasingly tightening their means-testing criteria and reviewing charging policies for social care as new ways of rationing resources are sought ahead of October’s spending review.

This month Derbyshire CC became the latest authority to announce a consultation on its fees. It wants to introduce graded charges for residents with savings of £50,000 or more to offset a predicted £90m funding shortfall over the next 10 years.

It is also considering asking recipients of Attendance Allowance and Disability Living Allowance to use those benefits to pay for the services they receive. Wokingham BC, meanwhile, recently decided to stop offering financial assistance to residents with savings of more than £23,000 – expecting them to either make their own care arrangements or fully reimburse the council for its expenditure. It will also remove fee-capping for non-residential care and respite care.

Jeff Jerome, director for personalisation at the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, told a social care conference he expected to see “quite a large change in [councils’] approach to the means test”.

“The expectation will be that people with money can pay,” he said, adding the potential to control service use through means testing was “much bigger” than through rationing via Fair Access to Care Services, which categorises people by need.

Both Age UK and Counsel & Care charities are compiling data on proposed changes to eligibility and charging policies.

Stephen Lowe, public policy adviser for Age UK, said important questions were emerging about councils’ justification for the increases being discussed, and the degree of transparency that lay behind charges.

“There do seem to be a lot of councils increasing their charges, and many of the hourly rates being introduced seem to be quite high,” he said. “There is a suspicion that in some cases it could even be an attempt to discourage people from using council services.”

Stephen Burke, chief executive of Counsel & Care, said he had a sense that councils were preparing to tighten their eligibility criteria and raise their charging regimes.

Jenny Owen, executive director for adults, health and community wellbeing at Essex CC and immediate past president of ADASS, said that reviewing charging policies was not unique to adult services departments  as councils prepared for dramatic cuts from April.

She said that some authorities probably felt unable to increase their charges further, while others may not charge for home-care services and felt such a situation had to end, or may choose to increase their eligibility criteria.

“I have no idea how many authorities are looking at doing this,” she said. “I suspect that there will be some places that may increase charges, but there will be others that won’t have anywhere to go.

“Everybody is going to be trying to protect the amount of money that they spend on frontline care and support.”

Ms Owen said she did not think councils would see increasing charges for home care services as a way to generate income.