A new dawn

The Care Act 2014 has paved the way for a revolution in social care legislation, bringing an end to a disjointed and uncertain era. The Act applies only to England as social care is now devolved (Wales has implemented the Social Services Well-being (Wales) Act 2014). Guidance was issued by the Department of Health in October 2014 and has many potential impacts, some of which I will discuss here. Final implementation of the Act will take effect on April 2016, when the funding element of the Act comes into force.

The Statutory Guidance:
key points

The Act puts into legislation a number of new concepts, not only in relation
to the person in need of care, but also
in relation to their carers'.

1. The wellbeing principle

The Act brings into focus the importance of considering the whole 'wellbeing' of the person. Local authorities now not only have to consider the cost of providing care, but wider issues such as giving the person control over their day to day life, as well as their physical and mental wellbeing.

2. Shift from providing services to meeting needs

Following on from the wellbeing principle, the local authority now has
a duty to meet eligible needs rather than just providing services, which is a major cultural shift.

Regardless of who provides the actual service, the duty to meet those needs rests with the authority.

3. Support for carers

The ONS produced a report on the amount of informal care provided to adults in June 2013 entitled, Valuing Informal Adult Care in the UK. The report states that the value of this care in 2010 was £61.7bn, or 4.2 per cent of GDP. This had almost tripled in 15 years.

Given the importance of the role that carers play, the Act has recognised, for the first time, their rights to have their needs assessed, independently of the needs of those they care for. The role of informal carers is vital, with potentially long hours and very low reward, with Carers Allowance in 2015 at £62.10 per week, for a minimum of 35 hours of caring.

The Act recognises the crucial role that carers play and the burden caring can place on them and their families; something our deputy clients are increasingly concerned about.

4. Assessment of needs and the National Eligibility Criteria

The Act has pulled together the guidance for assessing both residential (previously detailed in the Charging for Residential Accommodation Guide) and domiciliary care (previously covered by the Fairer Charging Policy.)

Prior to the Act, each local authority would interpret both sets of guidance
in their own way, which made it difficult for families to plan for social care needs, as the person receiving care moved from domiciliary to residential care. It was also a postcode lottery, with different authorities interpreting the rules in different ways.

Eligible needs

The new framework attempts to address the postcode lottery by determining what it means by 'eligible needs'.
The assessment of needs must identify how a person's needs affect their ability to achieve their outcomes and, how that affects their wellbeing. The criteria for deciding if needs are eligible have also been laid down:

1. Are the needs related to a mental/physical impairment or illness?

2. As a result, can a person achieve their outcomes, for example:

• Without assistance, pain or distress?

• Without it taking a lot longer than expected?

Outcomes are now defined and include:

• maintaining hygiene, nutrition;

• being safe in their own home; and

• being able to work, train etc.

1. As a result, does this have a significant impact on their wellbeing?

For needs to be eligible, all three conditions have to be met. The guidance does not however, define what 'significant impact' is and this could be open to interpretation.

Duty to provide information
and advice

Part of the difficulty for vulnerable people needing care and support, is getting the right advice at the right time. This is particularly important during times of crisis or, during the transition from care in the home to residential care.

In addition to dealing with the stress of supporting their loved ones, families would often be faced with a myriad of different (and sometimes contradictory) rules and information in relation to eligibility for state funded care.

Very often they would need to go to a number of different sources to try and gather as much information as they could. The Act gives local authorities a statutory duty to provide information and advice and if adequately implemented, this will support the person and their families and point them in the right direction.

For those who are assessed as being responsible for funding their own care, a further layer of complexity is added. The Act attempts to address this issue by allowing for local authorities to signpost to those who are self-funding to relevant advice, including financial advice.

It's too early to see how this will work, but it could involve an adviser who is trained in this specialised area of financial advice and is SOLLA accredited.

Funding: 'an issue'

The Act and the guidance are well intentioned and if supported, could have a positive impact on some of the most vulnerable in our society; the issue will be how this is funded.

Local authorities are subject to sweeping cuts to their budgets, while being instructed to take on new legal duties and responsibilities.

The assessment process is critical to the wellbeing principle, but given the cost implications of an increasing numbers of assessments, authorities may choose to use junior staff to conduct them and limit expenditure. The potentially negative impact on the quality of the assessment, and the outcomes for the person receiving care need little explaining.

While they have these duties to meet the 'eligible' needs identified by the assessments, they do not have to provide the services themselves. Much of this provision could fall onto charities and local groups.

Some may say that this is how it should be, as those working in our communities have a better understanding of the needs of that community. Again, this will come down to funding.
The fear is that many of the good things the legislation seeks to bring will be wiped out without financial support.

Cash-strapped authorities could also 'interpret' the guidance in line with what they can afford, rather than what a person needs. This could take us back to square one and undermine the benefits the Act could bring and, the very principle of wellbeing itself.

As a specialist IFA for over 30 years, working with disabled and vulnerable individuals across the UK as well as those in later life, we have long forecasted some of the problems that could arise from the Care Act. Not only have we committed to a wellbeing policy for our clients since 2012, we are about to launch a SOLLA Centre of Excellence to support deputies and clients.

At the recent launch of our Frenkel Topping Charitable Foundation, the former Secretary of State for Care, Norman Lamb MP (the architect of the Care Act), said: 'Rather frighteningly, the number of people who live with three
or more chronic conditions was about 1.9m in 2008, it will be 2.9m in 2019;
an increase of more than 50 per cent.'

We launched the Charitable Foundation when we saw how smaller charities and therefore individuals, may lose out due to financial pressures.
The Foundation, which aims to support projects and charities for vulnerable and disabled individuals, is, added Lamb,
'of critical importance to those people, to ensure that they are financially secure, that it's not something that they have
to worry about on top of all of their caring needs.'

Lynn Buckley is a SOLLA accredited consultant at specialist independent financial adviser, Frenkel Topping