To be sceptical about the reasons a carer wants to adopt my adult disabled brother?

[EasyEV]

Hello, I have added this question here as I can't find a carer topic.

My brother is 49 and mentally disabled. He lives on the other side of the country with a Shared Lives carer. He has been with her for 2.5 years. Before that he lived with our father until Dad passed away.

She gives good care and our brother is happy. However, she is a forceful lady and can be difficult to communicate and work with. However, we always put our ego to one side and think about the bigger picture for our brother's sake. Shared Lives even tried to deregister her about 9 months ago due to her attitude to meeting their guidelines and processes. It was more about red tape than her care of our brother.

She won on appeal and is on probation whilst they ensure she meets the CQC requirements on training etc.

We have our brother for a week at the moment. We aren't officially respite for the carer, as we just want to see him at our home and spoil him a bit. He he told us that the carer has asked to legally adopt him. He is very easily manipulated and as he is with her 24/7, she could easily bend to her will. She has already alienated him from one sister because she doesn't like the sister.

This is freaking us all out. He is our brother. I don't trust the carers reasoning for wanting to adopt him. I think it is because all his siblings keep a close eye on him and her personality means she doesn't like that oversight. I also feel guilty as we are not prepared to look after him 24/7. We probably have him for about 3 weeks a year across the year.

We don't have an LPA but could set one up, but I am not sure that would protect us/him? Am I being unreasonable in my attitude to this?

I get less than £400 per week as an allowance for caring for each late teen. I also get the £26.07 towards their food and I get £107 for their room which also includes electric, water, gas etc. I get less for looking after these over 18 teens under Shared Lives than I did fostering them when they were under 18. I am a landlord with a portfolio so the money I get from my property allows me to continue to care for these teens.

Seems like she wants some sore of legal guardianship. This way still collect the payment but not have to do the paperwork? I have a special guardianship order for my foster son. I still receive payment (less than half of what we got for fostering) but it means I don't have to keep up on courses and no paperwork. Also means no social workers and no threats to ever remove him from us. Wonder if there's an adult version of this she's after?
Shared lives carers for adults are basically non existent nowadays. If you can't take over the care yourselves and he's not unhappy or at risk then leave them be.
Group homes or care homes for people with disabilities are not always nice. For your brother the transition would be hard as it would be a very different type of care.
Why don't you just ask the foster carer what she meant. Might be totally harmless and you're blowing it all out of proportion.

Maybe she means POA? .

She is being paid to care

Do they all live in your house together at the same time?

I am in no way saying any carers - paid or unpaid (like myself) can get rich from the situation but you must agree that there is an opportunity which can be financially exploited- it does happen.

I can't say too much but in the case I mentioned up thread, a paid carer did financially exploit a child. They provided a neglectfully low level of care on a temporary contract and kept blocking new placements in really subtle but deceitful ways. All in all, it wasn't even for that much money, but this carer felt set and it all made sense when it got fully exposed. Horrible. I know must carers are great but we absolutely cannot fall in to the trap of thinking they (like nurses, teachers) etc are all angels and would never abuse their position of trust. It does happen.

You realise this is her brother not her child right? She didn't chose to be in this position, she isn't required by law or otherwise to be involved in his care.

Yes, I have a six bedroom house. DH help me care for them as retired. I have a cleaner I pay to come 2-3 times a week for 2 1/2 hours at a time and a gardener who comes for 2 1/2 hours each week to cut grass short so they can play cricket in garden in large net. I'll plod on until you gest is 21-22 then I'm hoping they will have learned enough independent skills to live together in a house nearby so I can help if they need me and they can come home for a meal each week so I can catch up on how they are doing but they have their independence independence. I don't think anyone got rich from fostering/shared lives. In fact without my property portfolio to give me income I doubt whether we could afford to do it. They pay £26.07 per week for food so less than £4 per day, but I spend at least £45 food on each as they like high protein diet for their sport and lots of varied fresh fruit and vegetables and I often buy them a breakfast or lunch out.

Sounds like they have lovely lives.

However, now imagine that a bad person wanted to exploit someone. Ok, so you can't financially exploit the food budget of £26 a week for an adult, but you could just about make that bit break even by giving this person (who probably can't advocate for themselves) cheap food. Again £400 a month for housing per person is pretty low, but say this bad actor has a reasonable mortgage, or it's paid off, that's an extra £4800 a year (and no one adult is using nearly 5 grand extra of water and electricity). Then this bad carer is getting £20,800 a year in self employment revenue to care for this person. Imagine they don't really take them out, if asked "oh John doesn't like going out, do you John?" or they only take them to places the carer themselves is interested in. Imagine they don't do all the things you or any normal carer does (as you listed) and they basically allow the disabled person to live a diminished life for £20,800 a year. They could even have a couple of these people and mostly leave them to occupy themselves while still being there with them (so not obvious neglect) and get double etc.

This is exactly how the person I mentioned operated. All the while ensuring the child couldn't move to a permanent placement (like was always intended). This person only got found out when someone who worked with them whistleblew etc.

The OP has already mentioned the carer has alienated family members and previous carers, that others who had concerns have been alienated AND that the company management have concerns themselves about the carer (pretty rare in my experience).