Staffing Plea Over Care Workload

A council is seeking to employ extra staff to help check how many pensioners were wrongly charged for their care. The Dumfries and Galloway authority has set aside £1.5m to reimburse people who paid for food preparation which they were entitled to receive for free.

However, it means nearly 4,000 individual care plans will have to be checked to see what repayment is due. A report to councillors says the work would take one member of staff more than two years to complete. The social work committee will be asked to appoint administrative assistants for a maximum of six months to carry out the process.

The cost of the extra staffing would be just over £46,000. “There is no capacity for this major piece of work to be undertaken within a normal working week by the administrative staff who service the charging policy,” the report states.

Dumfries and Galloway Council has already sent out £100 “goodwill” payments to about 350 people affected by the issue. The council hopes to have all reimbursements made by spring 2008.