Deputyship, finances, home repairs

[roundaboutthehillsareshining]

Arrgg the saga continues. So I posted a few months ago about my elderly relative (ER) who was discharged home but lacking capacity to manage finances. Asking how we're supposed to support her financially when her access to money is limited. The responses were mainly "don't worry about it, just buy food"..

But now it begins. There's something wrong with the wiring in the house and all the electics keep going off. So we've been instructed to find (and pay for) an electrician. The central heating is also up the spout, and again we've been told to book (and pay for) a heating engineer to fix it. The carers are concerned they can't safely access the house due to the state of the garden and the path not being maintained, so we've been told we need to organise (and pay for) gardening work. There's plumbing issues needing sorting, and, yep, you've guessed it....

Yes I understand that if deputyship is granted, we can claim the money back. But that's months away and there may not be money (we don't know). And we just don't have the funds to get involved in extensive (and expensive) house repairs, especially for a house which is going to be put on the market as soon as circumstances allow.

Can SS force us to spend our own money getting all these repairs done? What happens if we just don't have that sort of money?

No, social services can’t force you to carry out repairs. But if it’s no longer safe for your relative to be cared for in their own home, they may push for a move to a care home. They would typically defer payment until the deputyship order is granted (you need to make it clear you want permission to sell the property, if you haven’t already) and the proceeds of the sale can pay off any deferred care fees.

This is the problem though, we've already been told she doesn't meet the threshold for residential care. She doesn't need direct personal care, her carers provide prompting, indirect assistance and are just there to keep an eye that she's still eating and hasn't done anything really destructive or harmful to herself. So with residential care ruled out, what then happens?

Would she be interested in moving into a sheltered flat?

Maintenance of the house will be an ongoing problem. There will be so much less to look after if she can move.
A rented one if possible and the house is be sold?

This does seem a bit drastic though.

Yep. Been there and done it.

No SS cannot expect you to underpin costs in lieu of Deputyship. Doesn't mean they won't ask though. You need to hold your ground.

Most areas have some sort of maintenance team / care and repair group that will come in and sort properties out, and will defer payment until the Deputyship comes through.

Push back.

And if no joy, contact Age UK in your area and see if they can source a provider to do the works on deferred payment. Some local teams will do this too.

I suspect a lot of this is coming from the care agency, and rather than deal with it SS are seeing if they can "off load" the extra hassle and cost onto you.

Remember, very few people have the resources (let alone time) to run two households, don't let them bully you into anything you don't want to do.

Also, when you get Deputyship to warn you, you will be expected to sort all of this. Am finding it eye watering in terms of the time it is taking to get people out to quote etc. So if you can get them to sort all this for you now it will save a job later.

You can call the opg and court of protection to ask if they can release funds while you're waiting for deputyship, the cop can make one off decisions I think.who has told you all this work needs doing, I do think the electrics and gas need looking at. We're the hospital and social services aware that the house was potentially unsafe when she went home. A local support and kindness group may well have volunteers who would tidy up her garden for free, just tea and biscuits. Do you have access to her bank accounts, benefits etc to see how much money she has, her bank may be able to advise you.

Appreciate you’re trying to be helpful but none of this is correct, other than that COP can make one-off decisions. That bit is true but it’s unlikely it’ll be processed any quicker than the deputyship application already in progress. Neither OPG nor the bank will be able to help.

Potentially sheltered accommodation for respite care until her home can be made safe? But it really depends whether the condition of the house is bad enough for social services to deem that she’s unsafe to live there - which would only really happen if the care agency serves notice on the care package and a safeguarding concern is raised in relation to her lack of care/substandard living arrangements. Has your relative been assessed as lacking capacity in respect of care and living arrangement decisions?

Thanks. Obviously the information I was given is incorrect then.

Yes, lacking capacity for both health/welfare and finance.

I don't think the house can be made safe for someone who thinks it's Ok to use the hob/grill as heating if she's feeling chilly, and will put all hob burners and the grill with the door open (thankfully all electric) on full, then go for a nap in the other room.

She won't use the oil filled radiators and space heaters she's been bought, as she thinks that's what's making the electrics trip (it's not, we're pretty sure the electrics are either water ingress or vermin related). The house is listed and at last estimate, needed about £100k of work (not including any special requirements to comply with the listing - you can't just use "normal"materials, it seems)

The care agency are being great at raising their concerns, both to us and her social worker. We also told the social worker our concerns about the house before discharge and allegedly a safety assessment was undertaken. That assessment has never been shared, and I can't help but be suspicious whether it ever took place as I'm pretty sure any fire safety inspector would raise concerns about 30 year old extinguishers (that ER would be unable to use in an emergency anyway, as they're too heavy) being the only fire safety apparatus in an extremely high risk building.

If she has been deemed to lack capacity who took the decision to send her home, arrange carers, pay for carers and household bills.

Social Services made the decision. She needed to be discharged from hospital as was no longer receiving medical care

They told us we'd need Power of Attorney for the bills. Conveniently forgetting that when we were all in a meeting together and PoA was raised to ER, she became violent, abusive and ordered us all to leave....

They should have known that power of attorney cannot be granted once someone lacks capacity, did they suggest them applying for deputyship, did they hold a best interest meeting with a formal capacity assessment

Yes, they have told us we have to apply for deputyship. We're happy to do this, but want to have the meeting to serve the papers in a managed way, supported by a third party observer, as noone in the family has the expertise to support an extremely angry, potentially violent mentally ill person. The problem is that she hasn't been well enough yet to be able to serve the papers - we understand we have to give her the best chance of comprehension, so that means we can't serve while she's having an acute downturn. Even once we've put the application in, the CoP is currently taking around 9 months, so that's 9 months where the accommodation issues continue to stack up with no money to resolve them. Even once we have deputyship, I'm pretty certain the money to do up the house to a reasonable standard isn't there.

I'd love her to go into sheltered accomodation - she would be so much better if she was somewhere warm, with a proper bedroom, without stairs, with working electrics, a washing machine, a proper bathroom, hot water, etc. But because she's a homeowner, this isn't an option SS will offer. And we can't sell the house while the legal limbo continues, as noone has authority to do that.

Hi OP.
You can complete and submit a COP24 witness statement explaining why you have been unable to serve notice on your elderly relative (ie: history of aggression and violence, risk of a deterioration in wellbeing). Helpful if you have any supporting evidence or if the social worker is willing to complete a COP24 too explaining the circumstances.

In respect of your relative’s care and living arrangements, you could ask for a reassessment of her care needs. The care agency (if they’ve been as proactive as you suggest) should be able to supply helpful evidence to demonstrate the level of need.
You can then ask for a best interests meeting with the social worker, someone from the safeguarding team and someone from the care agency to discuss next steps - this will be an opportunity to argue for sheltered accommodation.

What's her medical and mental health diagnosis, I'm disappointed to hear that the cop weren't involved in her discharge plans if she failed her capacity assessments and there's no poa in place. Does she have a mental illness. Did the hospital or social services arrange an advocate or imca to support her.

There isn't a diagnosis as such, some brain damage is visible on her scans, but they're unsure what effect that is actually having on cognition and patterns of thought. She's been known to psychiatric services for over 10 years, but completely refuses to engage, so has no psychiatric diagnosis. She had an IMCA prior to hospital discharge, who was very good, but it is immensely difficult to support someone who has no insight into their condition and thinks that they are absolutely fine. ER is also living with active addiction, and refuses to engage with any addiction therapy or acknowledge there is an addiction problem, which compounds the issue.

Her social worker has told us that she would be considered baseline well enough to serve the papers (except when acutely ill) and so not to use a COP24. We do need to revisit Best Interests, which was done entirely over email and our input was was based on information we were promised but haven't been provided with (e.g. we said that going home would be the best thing, because it's what she wants, but only following a comprehensive risk and safety plan assessment due to the high risk nature of the property. We were promised this would be done and we would see it, but we've not seen a copy of the report and am not convinced it has been done).

The listing side is rather frightening. The nearest I got to being involved with a listed building was offering for a listed building which had had lots of work done on it, on condition that the works had had listed building consent, which it turned out they hadn’t. We pulled out, and my impression was that not having the listed building consent rendered the house essentially unsaleable until retrospective consent was gained. So my guess would be that you need to be very careful about getting local volunteer groups or even small firms etc involved. That is a guess though - it might be that simpler repairs wouldn’t need consent.

Id guess that a risk assessment was done based on whether your ER could physically manage the steps etc, rather than anything taking their cognitive status into account - that’s based on experience of a social worker deciding my mother had no nursing needs at all (she ended up in a highly specialist unit, and on experience working in a stroke team with people who are cognitively impaired. I agree that your ER is a complex case to be fair to them.

For now I would just make sure that the carers and you continue to land everything on SS’s desk. But what a worry for you.

Yes I would continue to chase the social worker as it sounds like they really need to pick up the slack here.
Have there been any DoLS assessments? It’s highly unlikely the court will grant authority to sell the property unless it’s been determined that it’s not in your relative’s best interests to continue living there.