In this section

October 2002

ADSS and ILF Reviews
Trevor Chapman
Operations Director

In July 2002 Bill Robbins, Secretary of ADSS Disabilities Committee, sent a letter to all members about “Independent Living Fund links with CSSRs”. In his letter he explained that the ILF would be writing to Directors of Social Services and to Contact Officers setting out our programme of reviews for that authority.

Our policy is to carry out a review visit to all our clients every 2 years. As our role is to meet any additional need not being met by local authority provision and because of the requirement that the Local Authority (LA) provide services or payments to the value of at least £200 per week it is important that the LA are involved in this review. The input of the LA must be confirmed and we ask that the review visit is carried out jointly with the local authority social worker / care manager.

We have experienced difficulties in some cases where there is currently no worker allocated to our client. Obtaining information about the LA input to a package can be difficult. Without this we cannot confirm that our payments are correct, and this may lead to payment problems for the client.

In order to try to overcome these difficulties we propose, every 3 months, to send a list of those clients in the LA’s area that we plan to revisit during that time.
The information will include the name and address of all 1993 Fund clients we intend to visit. We will also state the number of Extension Fund clients in the area we expect to visit.

As Contact Officers I would be grateful if you would ensure that this information is made available to the appropriate people within your organisation. We ask that someone is allocated to each of these clients so that we are able to confirm with a named worker the input to the package by your authority, thus enabling us to jointly review the client’s needs.

Some adjustments need to be made to our computer system to enable us to produce these details. We hope to have completed these changes by the end of the year and will contact you as soon as possible.

Viruses via Email
Paul Stringer
IT Manager

Recently the Funds have received an increasing amount of viruses via email. Can I request that all of you check that your antivirus system is regularly kept up to date (at least weekly), as new viruses are being created at an alarming rate, and also ensure that your machine is scanned for viruses on a regular basis. If you have a systems administrator where you work, it may be a good idea to ask them how your machine is protected and make sure it complies with the above.

New Quarterly Analysis
James Sanderson
Chief Executive Assistant

The Quarterly Statistical Analysis for the quarter ending June 2002 is now available. The report contains detailed statistics and client information for both Funds (Extension and 1993) as well as providing a breakdown of the number of clients by Local Authority. If you would like a copy of the report you can either visit our website at www.ilf.org.uk or contact me on 0115 9428204.

Contact Officer Information Days
Jeff Macbeth
Customer Services Manager

As I am sure you are all aware, the Information Day programme is already well underway, and will continue up until the end of March 2003.

Following each day we are collating all of the main issues that arise, and will then produce a document with answers to queries from all dates up to the end of December, and distribute this to all of you, and then again for all dates up to the end of March. We hope this will enable you to share from each other’s experiences.

Can I remind those of you who have not yet returned their booking form to do so at your earliest convenience, as we have to sort out the rooms and catering well in advance.

If you have not received an invitation to attend, please contact me immediately on 0115 9428244 and I will arrange for this to be either faxed or emailed to you straight away, as all invitations were sent out some time ago.

Overpayments – A plea from the Overpayments Team
Debbie Stephenson
Overpayments Manager

A common cause of overpayment on the 1993 Fund is any change in the services/direct payments provided by Local Authorities (LAs). As you know, in order to be eligible to access funding on the 1993 Fund, a client needs to be in receipt of at least £200 worth of services from their LA each week. If the LA’s input falls below this level then the client becomes ineligible and any funding that they receive from the ILF is classed as an overpayment.

There are three main ways in which these overpayments occur:

1. The LA reduces their input to below £200 per week.
2. The LA withdraw their services altogether.
3. The LA on carrying out a review of direct payments discover that a client has unused funding. This funding is recovered by the LA, without regard to the commitment to meet the first £200 of any care package and consequently, whether the unused monies are an overpayment by the LA or the ILF.

In all of these instances the ILF will raise an overpayment and seek to recover. Individual circumstances will dictate to whom we go to pursue recovery, the client or the LA. As a general guide, where there seems to be no evidence of deceit by the client and we can establish that care has been employed using our funding, we will normally look to recover the overpayment from the LA. This is done on the basis that clients and LA’s can only access ILF funding where the LA is meeting the first £200 of the care package each week.

The ILF would prefer to prevent these overpayments from occurring in the first place rather than have to pursue a more vigorous policy of recovery. With this in mind, the ILF overpayment recovery team would like to issue a reminder to all LA staff to request that they keep the ILF informed in joint care packages of all changes to LA funding as promptly as possible. Please do not ask the client to inform us and then assume that this has been done.

Consultation with Clients
Trevor Chapman
Operations Director

In September 2001 we established a Client User Group, which has met regularly to provide feedback on various aspects of the service we provide to our clients.

The group consists of clients of both Funds from the Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield areas and meets in Nottingham.

The meetings have been very successful in providing feedback, and their input has led to changes in our service. We have consulted the group about changes to our literature. The results of this consultation will be seen soon when we publish a wide range of leaflets and a new application form.

We have also consulted with the user group on subjects such as our review process, the letters we issue, information about employing personal assistants, our telephone service and the language that we use.
The next step in this initiative is to consult with clients in other parts of the country. The first area to be included is central London. Clients from 6 London Boroughs have been invited to a consultation meeting, to be held in November. We have also asked these people if they are willing to take part in postal, telephone or email surveys about our service.

There will then be a roll-out programme to other parts of the UK in the new year.

What is Independent Living?
Jacky Fisher
Social Work Director

The ILF has found that we are sometimes asked to fund living arrangements which do not seem to include the basic concepts of choice and control for our clients. This tends to particularly occur when there are several people sharing accommodation. We have therefore produced guidance on the main factors which should be present for a client to be considered as living independently.

Clients should have the right to choose who they live with, where they live, and how they are supported. We at the ILF will look for two main criteria to be met. They are as follows:

1. It must be clear what each individual’s care needs are and how many hours of care are required to meet these needs, and how much this care costs. If relevant it should show how many of the hours can reasonably be shared with another person. It is NOT acceptable to have a total cost for more than one person with no indication of how many people are providing care to individuals at all times of the day.

2. We accept that in some instances our clients may not have real choice over which agency or organisation provides their care. HOWEVER we would expect our clients to be able to say if they wish to have their carer changed, and they would not have to tolerate a carer just because it suited the running of the “group”. This needs to be made clear to the care provider and the Local Authority (LA) representative.

We are sure that you will agree that these are essential features of independent living, and we would appreciate your help in seeing that LA staff understand them, and are able to produce the necessary information.

Section 117 and Section 8 (Scotland) of Mental Health Act
Jeff Macbeth
Customer Services Manager

Section 117 of the Mental Health Act 1983 applies when a person, who has been detained in a psychiatric hospital under section 3 of the Mental Health Act 1983, is discharged. A plan for their aftercare must be agreed before discharge, and must cover the needs of that person in order to establish a safe discharge, not just mental health monitoring. This has been upheld in a Law Lords ruling.

The Health Authority and LA Social Services both have a duty to provide care under s.117, free of charge, for as long as the needs remain. In order for a s.117 to no longer apply a reassessment by both authorities must agree that the needs no longer exist.
To include any needs covered by the s.117 aftercare plan within an ILF package would mean that the client was being required to contribute to care they had a legal right to receive free.

S.117 applies to England and Wales. Section 8 of the Mental Health Scotland Act 1984 relates to the aftercare of people in Scotland and makes the same provision as s.117, but, at present, there are no restrictions on LA being able to charge for services.

To fund care included in either a s.117 or s.8 aftercare plan the ILF would be inappropriately funding care that was the responsibility of other agencies. The ILF will not therefore fund any needs that are included in a s.117 or s.8 aftercare plan.

Any needs that are not included in an aftercare plan can be considered in the normal way, however Social Services must provide at least £200 per week worth of services over and above that care that constitutes part of the aftercare plan in order for an individual to be eligible for ILF funding.

ILF to move premises
Jeff Macbeth
Customer Services Manager

The ILF has been growing as an organisation over the years, to the extent that we outgrew our current premises some time last year. Since we are likely to continue to increase in size, it has been necessary for us to move premises completely.

The lease has now been signed for the new building, located in Nottingham City Centre, and the building is currently being adapted to meet our needs. The new building is large enough to allow us to recruit more staff, which should enable us to improve our clearance times and offer a better service generally.
We are expecting that the move will take about 4 days, spread over a weekend in order to minimize disruption to service, and this move is expected to take place on 10th to 13th January 2003.

This move will also allow us better facilities for client service, including better training facilities for our staff, and better switchboard operation with a local rate telephone number for the general public. We also intend to have a Type-Talk operator, and improved IT.

Naturally our postal address will change, as will our telephone/fax numbers. We will mailshot all clients and include the new details in the January Newsletter. Correspondence by email will be unaffected, as will the website, as our domain will remain the same.

Local Authority Reclaim of VAT
Jeff Macbeth
Customer Services Manager

We sometimes come across cases where for some reason the Local Authority (LA) are either already doing or are planning to take on the full contract of care with the client’s care agency that provides the joint care package. This is sometimes because the client is incapable of managing the arrangement and has no other appointee, and sometimes because the cost of a new package is too high, and can be reduced by the LA reclaiming the VAT element.

The main issues from our point of view is that we need to ensure the arrangement is secure, that the client still has choice and control over the care they receive, and that the LA is still contributing at least £200 per week after the VAT has been reclaimed.

We have received a number of enquiries regarding the legal implications of the LA setting up this arrangement. We have contacted Customs & Excise, and they have said the following:

“In general terms, if the care is something they (the LA) are required by law to provide, they will be entitled to the input tax when the whole of the contract is between themselves and the care provider.”

There does, however, appear to be some variation in applying this rule between different VAT offices, and therefore we are recommending that it will be the LA’s responsibility to get official agreement from Customs & Excise before making such arrangements. We will need to have confirmation of the agreement before we can start any award to a client where such an arrangement is intended.

Changes to the ILF Website
Mark Donegan
Web Controller

Recent updates and additions to the website are as follows:
. ‘Changes to Policy’ document – a summary of recent changes following the Quinquennial Review.
. ‘Annual Report’ – both the client version and the full version.

A newsletter and archive literature section has been added. This includes current and recently archived newsletters, the quarterly analysis for June 2002 and Contact Officer bulletin for December 2001.

A site search facility has been added to the home page (both normal and large text versions of the site) where visitors can search our site by inputting a word or phrase.

Changes in progress:
A facility to translate our website into different languages has been completed but not yet published – I need to do some fine tuning first. Languages included are Chinese (Cantonese), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish.

It is intended that the new literature, when available, will also be available to view or download, and we hope to have the financial report available soon.

Local Authority Charging Policies
Robyn Lewis
Customer Services Officer

Many LAs are changing their charging policies from October. The Funds current position is, as previously, that the ILF will not increase to take over an increase in the LA’s charge.

Points to consider are:

If a decrease occurs in the LA charge, the Fund must be informed to reassess the case to take into account this change. If there are no other changes, any decrease in LA charges is likely to result in an equivalent increase in our calculation of the client’s available income, and therefore a reduction in their ILF payments.
If an increase in charges results in a decrease in the LA’s provision, the LA must ensure that their net provision does not go below £200 per week.
LAs should get in touch with the Department of Health if there are any difficulties with clients paying their charges.