Shit is my aunt getting too much money

Hi Op, hope you got to the bottom of this
Aside from your main issue I thought the £80 a month expenses was a little low, I felt sure I had read something that said £25 per week, anyway, checking the ,gov website it states the the personal expenses allowance for 24/25 is £30.15 per week and is reviewed in April each year

I challenged an overpayment when I had proof that it was their mistake and I had done my part by notifying them. They threatened me, I appealed and I won.

Sonif you clearly notified them personally I wouldn’t accept your aunt suffering because of their cock up.

Me too! As Deputy I had to do an annual report which caused me no end of anxiety as it had to balance to the penny!

Are you sure it’s the DWP who called and not the COP? I was Deputy for my stepfather whilst he was in a care home and received a call from someone from the Court of Protection who did a visit with me to see him in his care home. She asked for details of his finances, I took his bank statements and care home invoices. Like your aunt, he was initially in receipt of AA before being admitted, but that stopped when he became a partial funder. It’s pretty pointless paying AA to a partial funder as they would just have to pay the full amount straight to the LA for their fees.
The bank statements will clearly show what your aunt has been paid and as others have pointed out, the pension payment is coded SP whilst attendance allowance payments coded AA.
The only issue that I could think of is where SP or AA has been paid into a different account (my SFs SP was paid to me for a short time before I obtained Deputyship) and not been declared to the LA.

Following, best of luck with it. My aunt is 87 and might be going into a care home, she receives AA.

SP does stand for state pension. Attendance allowance will show up as AA

I meant @dumpydumpydumpdump not @Choux

There is a discrepancy somewhere with the money as the personal allowance left over after her contribution should be £30.15 a week. Not £80 per month

Yes, but that’s at one end of the spectrum. @Choux’s is a very basic list and has no provisions for bigger purchases, eg a dementia clock, or replacing a tablet

No. Only if you are a self-funder. If the LA contributes to the fees, you cannot claim Attendance Allowance.

£850. a week where is this. My mother's is £1850. a week

Granted the £80 isn't much and every elderly person is different but my mum has dementia and has no need of any of the things you have listed. She has plenty of clothes from before she went in and we buy her slippers, nightgowns etc for birthdays and Christmas.

She only needs a few toiletries (shampoo basically) as she has lots of prescription shower gels and creams as she has skin problems / regular skin infections.

Dentistry, eye care, audiology has stopped (no teeth, won't wear her dentures, glasses or hearing aids any more) and she can't read or watch tv. She needs a haircut every 6-8 weeks.

By the time people move into a care home they do have a very much reduced life. People move to a care home because they cannot live independently anymore.

I suspect it's simply that her claim was left open in case circumstances changed but she's not actually getting payments.

On another note I think it's appalling that she's left with £80 a month. Granted her care and food is funded but that's not enough for clothes, dentistry/eye care/audiology, toiletries, hair care or wigs, gifts, entertainment, hobbies, books. It basically assumes that an elderly person in need of residential care no longer has any life at all. Or is being subsidised by family.

I don't know about that. My mum's 92 and got a slight uplift in pension when my dad died 18 months ago but she certainly didn't inherit the bulk of his pension.

I was just looking again at OPs posts. It's unusual for a pension to be paid weekly. All the gov web pages I have seen say that pension is 'usually' paid every 4 weeks. OP also says the attendance allowance claim was made in Covid. I wonder if someone at DWP processed the claim incorrectly and added it to the pension amount in the system so she is still getting AA and SP paid weekly as a single payment and appearing on the statement as DWP SP.

OP - do not worry. If the above has happened then it is their mistake and not yours. And it sounds like everything extra you have received has been paid to the care home not kept. The care home has then claimed less from the council for your aunt's care so if they wanted to straighten it out the council would have to pay it back to DWP. But I think the DWP will just fix their mistake so it is correct going forwards.

I am unsure why they want to visit your aunt and you rather than just talk to you on the phone and talk to the care home to establish the facts. I would ask why they need to do that as your aunt is 87 and presumably unwell. Talk to the care home finance person as well as they may be familiar with how DWP work and this type of potential error.

And if you do feel you need to have a meeting with this person I would not take any bank statements or other docs with you or make or agree to any payments to them just in case they aren't legit.

I think at 87, assuming her husband was born at similar time, she will be in cohort that inherit all of their husbands state pension, as a possible reason why she might have an enhanced state pension.

I was just about to say the same. My mum's pension and attendance allowance come as separate payments at different times of the month.

Also neither attendance allowance rate would equate to £340 every 4 weeks. The lower rate is £72 a week and the higher is £108 a week.

www.gov.uk/attendance-allowance/what-youll-get

From what you have said so far I think the £340 which says SP on it is her pension.

@Stigsmother

The DWP treats POA as appointeeship, in fact POA trumps a DWP appointeeship as POA is court ordered. And we would call an appointee/POA if a discrepancy occurred, it's quicker, and people don't always take any notice of letters.

I have never given the DWP my POA.

If she has been paid AA in error while being subsidised by the LA, you can request a backdated financial reassessment to remove the AA from the assessed contribution to care.

However, the LA will know that entitlement to AA ceases after 4 weeks of subsidised residential care/hospital admission, so should not have included it and the LA I work for would have alerted you that it was in payment and to stop it by contacting the DWP.