Spoiler Alert! Social services don’t always get their facts right and WRONGLY deny people free Continuing Health Care funding (CHC).
Harry’s* story – how an elderly gentleman was WRONGLY refused CHC in his hour of need:
(* The names of all family members have been changed to protect their identities)
A lady got in touch with us recently – like many people who phone us, she was extremely upset – and so we spent time with her, trying to understand what had happened and how we could help her.
Melissa* was desperately worried about her parents.
Her elderly father, Harry*, was being cared for at home by Agnes* – his devoted wife of more than 65 years.
Harry had been in and out of hospital for many months. There had been delays in properly diagnosing his prostate cancer and he had spent such a long time in a hospital bed that he had developed the most excruciating pressure sores that were off the scale in terms of their severity.
When the time came for him to leave hospital, a social worker WRONGLY decided that he was not eligible for free Continuing Health Care.
We have covered the subject of Continuing Health Care (CHC) elsewhere on our website – you can find out more here.
So poor Harry was sent home to be cared for by his elderly wife. Admittedly, social services did put in a package of care but it was woefully inadequate. Agnes still had to provide care throughout the night.
Harry was deemed to be a self-funder. (We’ve also covered the subject of self-funding elsewhere on our website – you can find out more here)
This meant that he had to pay the entire cost of his care. This would have been bad enough if the care had been adequate but sadly the carers didn’t do a great job and when Agnes dared to point out that her husband’s pressure sores had not been properly cleaned the carers stormed out of the house, slamming the garden gate shut so hard that it fell off its hinges!
This was the final straw for Agnes who, not knowing where to turn, tearfully phoned her daughter.
Melissa got in touch with us and we immediately took on her case. It quickly became very apparent that Harry had been wrongly denied CHC.
We contacted Lewisham Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) which, it has to be said, does not have the best record when it comes to providing CHC – in fact they are one third less likely to grant CHC than the average CCG.
See our table of CHC funding by CCG here.
We asked Lewisham CCG to provide us with the full reasons why Harry had been turned down for CHC then asked them to urgently review his case.
Thanks to our intervention, Lewisham CCG backed down and agreed that Harry should not, for the past five months, have needed to spend his entire pension on care costs and instead awarded him CHC. We are also fighting for the money that was wrongly taken from Harry to pay for his care to be refunded retrospectively
A happy ending to the story, you might think. We would argue otherwise.
Very sadly, Harry has since passed away. His final few months should not have been spent having to hand over his pension to pay for poor quality care.
His wife and daughter should have been able to spend their last precious days with Harry, free of the burden of money worries. They should not have had to battle Lewisham CCG over the grossly unfair decision to deny Harry free CHC funding.
The family generously wrote to us, thanking the team at Steene Law for obtaining justice for Harry. Their letter read:
“…you were all so kind at all times and went out of your way to help”.
The moral of the story is this ….
If you feel that your loved one has been unfairly denied free CHC funding and is instead being made to pick up the costs of their care, don’t delay. Get in touch with us now on 0203 653 0623.
Our initial 30 minute telephone chat is FREE so call the experts at Steene Law now for a conversation.