North Yorkshire County Council has been criticised by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman after a family’s care bill leapt from hundreds to thousands of pounds a month without notice.

The way the council communicated the change to the woman and her daughter came under the Ombudsman’s scrutiny after they complained the council had suddenly decided to take into account the woman’s home, when assessing how much she needed to pay for her care.

The woman first went to live in supported living accommodation in 2013 after she developed Alzheimer’s, at a weekly cost of £900. At the time the council chose to disregard the value of her home, and so she only had to pay £57.20 a week towards the cost. It carried out annual financial assessments every year till 2017.

The daughter moved into her mother’s home in 2017. No assessment was carried out in 2018 but in 2019 the council wrote to the mother to say a new assessment needed to be made. In a telephone call to the daughter the council explained second properties would now be taken into account, and the mother would have to pay the full cost of her care.

The family was left with £33,000 in care charges, and a further £380 towards the cost of progressing a delayed payment agreement (DPA), which would mean when the house was sold any money owing would come out of the proceeds of the sale.

The Ombudsman’s investigation criticised the way the council communicated with the mother and daughter. The council has already accepted this was not satisfactory and has apologised.

The Ombudsman found the council did not give advice and information about the impact of the change in its treatment of the property in the financial assessment. The council was not clear about the detail of its new charging policy, how it applied it, or its reasons for deciding to include the value of the home in the financial assessment. The council also did not ensure the mother fully understood the details of the DPA when she signed the application form.

The Ombudsman also criticised the council for the delay in dealing with the daughter’s complaint.

Michael King, Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, said:

“When such significant changes are being made to the way a family pays for care, councils must ensure they provide clear, accurate and easy-to-understand advice and information on why those changes are being made.

“In this case, while we cannot say whether the council was right to change the way it assessed the family’s finances, the absence of clear information led to confusion and a loss of trust in the council’s processes.

“I welcome the council’s readiness to accept the recommendations I have made to remedy the situation for this family, and the wider steps it will now take to ensure other families are not affected in the same way.”

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s role is to remedy injustice and share learning from investigations to help improve public, and adult social care, services. In this case the council has provided the daughter with a copy of its current charging policy for non-residential care and has explained when its approach to the treatment of property within this policy changed, who authorised the change and whether any assessment of the impact on vulnerable service users was done. The council will also carry out a review of its decision not to apply the property disregard to the mother’s financial assessment and apply the new decision to the mother’s case from February 2020.

It has confirmed the DPA was not finalised and it will pay the daughter £500 for the distress caused and her time and trouble in pursuing the matter.

The Ombudsman has the power to make recommendations to improve processes for the wider public. In this case the council will review each time it has removed a property disregard from a service-user since April 2019. If it finds faults similar to this case it should follow the principles agreed here to remedy any injustice caused.

“Member states must take a stand against pushbacks at borders and clearly oppose attempts to legalise this illegal practice”, said today the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović.

Human rights violations against refugees, asylum seekers and migrants at the borders of Council of Europe member states have proliferated at an alarming rate, especially the denial of access to asylum and returns without individual safeguards, frequently accompanied by brutal violence or even the endangerment of human life. Such practices at borders (often referred to as ‘pushbacks’) undermine legal guarantees clearly established in the Refugee Convention and European Convention on Human Rights. Practices violating the right to apply for asylum, the prohibition of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment, and the prohibition of collective expulsions, are increasingly justified as a necessary way to address emergency situations.

It is time for the governments of European states to call a halt to any legislative initiatives or policies that would result in the attempted, so-called normalisation of pushbacks and eliminate crucial safeguards to protect the rights of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants at borders.

Now is a crucial moment to speak out. Shortly after 12 member states of the European Union proposed to “adapt the existing legal framework to the new realities” at their borders, and amid growing talk of legalising pushbacks, EU leaders will come together in Brussels to discuss migration policy.

While some member states certainly face challenging situations, any suggestion that this should allow them to set aside or cherry-pick key human rights protections must be emphatically rejected.

Additionally, steps must finally be taken by all European states to hold each other to account for these violations. These often occur in the name of ‘protecting Europe’s borders’, are driven by a joint focus on deterrence, and sometimes benefit from financial or material assistance from other member states. Importantly, the lack of real solidarity in hosting refugees, asylum seekers and migrants across Europe must be tackled. Although the lack of solidarity cannot be an excuse to violate rights, it creates a powerful incentive for countries of first arrival to push people back. As such, it requires European states to face up to their joint responsibility to tackle this serious human rights problem on our continent.

Pushbacks are a violation of human rights. They cannot be legalised.

Link: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-10/cp210189en.pdf

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