Residential Care and SDS

Recently a number of enquiries have been received in relation to using SDS to fund planned, regular short term residential care for short breaks and also for inclusion in Contingency Plans. The following has been taken from the residential care policy, red italics are where clarification has been made by the SDS team.

Short Term Residential Care

Short-term care may be arranged as a response to an immediate crisis and where community care alternatives are not available or considered viable or safe. Provision will be for a limited period of time, no more than 2 weeks in the first instance. Where short term care is arranged, it should be made clear on the Support Plan to the Service User and their Carer that this is a short-term arrangement for a stated limited period

It is important that short-term care is reviewed promptly and is not allowed to drift into a permanent placement.

It would therefore be appropriate to short term care in a contingency plan, though only where community care alternatives are not available, considered viable or safe.

Residential Respite Care (Non-voucher)

Residential respite is most commonly provided by the issue of Short Break Vouchers but can be booked by the social worker/RASO for a fixed period if it is felt to be more appropriate, for example if the situation in urgent or if the assessor feels that the Carer may have difficulty in managing the vouchers.

The criteria are the same as for the provision of vouchers, and any respite provided in this way counts towards the total number of nights of Respite provided, ie the benchmark for most situations is 28 bed-night respite in any one year, 42 nights if there are particular pressures on a carer.

Using Direct Payments for Residential Care Direct payments and 'direct payments in lieu of multi-vouchers' can be used to fund short term residential care; the following is guidance from the department of health (2009)

Direct payments are intended to support independent living and, as such, they cannot be used to pay for adults to live for the long term in residential care. They can be made to enable people to purchase for themselves a short stay in residential care, provided that the stay does not exceed a period of four consecutive weeks in any 12- month period.

Where the interim period between two stays in residential care is less than four weeks, then the two stays should be added together to make a cumulative total, which should also not exceed four weeks if it is to be paid for with direct payments.

If two stays in residential care are more than four weeks apart then they are not added together. Once a direct payment recipient has had four consecutive weeks in residential care, or two or more periods separated by less than four weeks which added together total four weeks, then they cannot use their direct payments to pay for any more residential care until 12 months have passed from the start of the four- week period. On the other hand, as long as each stay is less than four weeks and there is an interim period of at least four weeks between two or more stays which added together exceeds four weeks, then the service recipient may use their direct payments to pay for residential breaks throughout the year.

Procedure

Team Managers can approve up to 28 days residential respite care. Applications for 29 to 42 days must be submitted to the Funding Panel. Over 42 days can only be approved by Heads of Service. (There are different approval arrangements for service users with a Learning Disability)

Charging

The same rules apply to charging for Short-term care as to Short Break Vouchers.

The service user will be required to make a contribution to their care, currently £10.48 per night (2009-2010). Up to date information is available on the Intranet at http://lccintranet/acs/groups/cft/guidance under Financial Information. The service user will pay the client contribution directly to the home.

There will be occasions when the Home chosen may charge more than the rate paid by Lancashire County Council. Normal third party top up arrangements apply where that is possible, this is also payable directly to the home.

Service user contributions and top up arrangements should not be made from individual budgets.