Shit is my aunt getting too much money

[NoOneKnowsWhoYouAre]

I have POA for my 87 yo aunt. She has been in a care home for 3 years. Prior to this she got attendance and I got carers allowance. I rang and told them she was in a care home She gets £340 a week which I assumed was her state pension plus her widows pension as her DH died 30 years ago after working full time. She pays £1291 every 4 weeks to the care home. So is left with £80 a month for personal spends. The rest is topped up by the council. When I stopped claiming carers and attendance allowance it had been overpaid so we had to pay back £600.

Today I have had a call from someone who said she was from the DWP saying she needed to come and visit my aunt and I to check she was still allowed it as it had been claimed in COVID. She said that the attendance allowance claim was still active??

Now I'm panicking that she has been overpaid for 3 years. She has no money to pay them back. I use that £80 to take her out and but her clothes etc each month. None of the benefits calculations work when someone is in a care home.

Anyone have any idea what is going on here?

We are in England and mums attendance allowance is dealt with through the local council; it stopped when they funded her respite care when my dad had an accident. However when dad funds respite care privately the AA continues as it's a private arrangement. When she went home after dads accident it was reinstated; in the meantime it went directly into the care home fees. It was all dealt with through the social workers but being in a nursing home didn't make her not entitled to it, it just meant it went directly to the council to fund her care.
I'd speak to the social worker that deals with the local authority top up.

I'll try to dig it out tomorrow. Hopefully it's not going to end up with her owing loads of money, but if she does they will have to agree a minimal payment plan.

It sounds like thet suspended it and haven't actually been paying on it they just haven't closed it properly

I don't know if you saw my comment above but I would be dubious as to the legitimacy of the call. The DWP would not ordinarily call a relative they would write to the person or an official appointee. Something to think about anyway.

I did wonder this as she didn't ask me any identification questions, so I told her to write to me. She wanted to visit me though and had my aunts name which was weird.

I did Google the number and it seems to be a legitimate one but I know they can be forged

On DM’s bank statement the state pension and attendance allowance come as separate payments. DM’s AA is paid monthly - although it may be that you can choose to be paid weekly or monthly.

Hope that helps.

Presumably they have your contact details from the POA

I just can't believe someone would call in that capacity on a Saturday, particularly on a Saturday before everyone goes back to work on Monday. Did she mention you making a payment to her?

Why does the care home only cost £1200 a month?!

It doesn't, that's her contribution and the local authority pays the rest.

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, its quicker, and people don't always take any notice of letters.

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.

@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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

Thank you to everyone for taking the time to reassure me. I dvd no idea what is going on and will try to find out tomorrow and Tuesday (I have meetings most of the day tomorrow). To answer a few questions: she has always been paid her pension weekly, it was like that when I took over her accounts. Definitely no separate payment for AA. She has severe dementia so I can't ask her about it, she thinks she still works. £80 isn't much cj month but thf it is enough for her, as she does nothing. It's horrible really, she sits in the care home getting worse and worse. Also I put in my original post that she pays the care home, that was meant to say the care home fees, she pays it to the council who pay the fees, so not direct to the care home. The fees are actually £850 a week and she pays £320 ish a week contribution

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

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

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

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

I meant @dumpydumpydumpdump not @Choux

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