Silver linings

It was not long ago that I attended the launch of Frenkel Topping's charitable foundation, which was timed to coincide with the coming into effect of the Care Act 2015.

Dame Philippa Russell spoke about the societal good the charity would be able to achieve in tandem with a truly progressive piece of legislation.

Alongside her, the then Minister of State for Care and Support, Norman Lamb, highlighted how crucial the act will be in a country where people living with three or more chronic conditions is expected to rise to nearly three million by 2019.

'This is the existential challenge that our health and care system faces and the system is
not well designed to meet their needs... the work that the foundation does and will do in
the future is of critical importance to those people to ensure that they are financially secure,' Lamb observed.

What a shame, then, that the government has chosen to delay the implementation of the second phase of the act until at least 2020, which would have introduced the highly anticipated care cap.

Explored in greater detail by Leah Steele, the cap would have given care service users a clear threshold up to which they must fund their own care, (£72,000) after which the state begins to provide financial support.

It's little wonder that the government has been accused by certain quarters of favouring the two-stage implementation route specifically to facilitate this delay.

In another matter of huge importance to vulnerable clients, the new lasting power of attorney (LPA) forms, introduced on 1 July, have created a great degree of concern among practitioners.

Alarm bells have been sent ringing by the fact that third parties no longer need to be notified that an LPA has been registered, there appears to be no way of determining whether the person signing the certification page is qualified to do so, and the potentially negative consequences of electing to have the LPA take effect only when capacity has been lost.

As Dominic Lawrence and Radhika Mehta explore, the forms also fail to offer donors any great deal of freedom with regards to how their assets are managed.

It is with an air of frustration then (rather than an anarchy flag and a Guy Fawkes mask) that we must consider the lot of many vulnerable clients in Britain today.

Sometimes, it can be hard to find the silver linings.

Binyamin Ali is the editor of Private Client Adviser