ROOF Blog

A government Green Paper on care for the elderly suggests that people may have to pay up to £20,000 to insure themselves against the cost of being cared for at the end of their lives. The number of old people requiring care will be swelled by another 1.7 million by 2026 and the cost is expected to skyrocket.

An independent report has found that a government programme providing housing support to vulnerable and homeless people has resulted in ‘significant’ savings in the cost of other services. The report said the £1.6 billion invested through Supporting People has saved other services more than £3.4 billion through reduced costs in homelessness, tenancy failure, crime, health and residential care. It has also lead to other benefits including reducing the risk of social exclusion, increasing educational chances for children and improving the quality of life for vulnerable people.

A poll on the pressure of being a carer has found than three out of four of them have reached breaking point. The most common cause was with the bureaucracy of accessing NHS care and benefits, but the poll found that for many the burden of the carer role was so great that some people have had breakdowns and others attempted suicide.

Charities including Carers UK, Mencap and Alzheimers Society are among nine charities which have drawn up a carers poverty charter calling for better benefits for carers. The charities estimate that six million carers looks after family members or friends at home, but fewer than 500,000 carers actually get the allowance. They want an increase on the weekly carer’s allowance of £53.10, and greater support.

Young people housed by local authorities are entitled to ‘more than a roof over their heads’, a ruling by the House of Lords established. The Law Lords judged that councils have a duty of care to assess the wider needs of 16- and 17-year-olds coming to them following family breakdown or because they are refugees. Their judgment clarified whether young people asking local authorities for accommodation should be dealt with by housing departments, or children’s services, as they finally ruled. Solicitors have called the judgment a ‘huge step forward for children’s rights and required councils to rethink services’.

A group of care homes is planning legal action over fees they are paid by councils for looking after residents. As many as 250 care home owners are joining together to form the Fairer Fees Forum and are demanding a judicial review into what councils pay for residents funded by the state. They argue that currently the fees are ‘far below’ the cost of providing the care.

People smugglers have used a children’s home beside Heathrow airport to traffic Chinese children into the country to work in prostitution and the drugs trade, a secret immigration document has revealed. At least 77 children have gone missing since March 2006 from the home and only four have been found. The local council says the disappearances seemed ‘planned and coordinated’ by criminal gangs.

Meanwhile, the government is looking to recruit 60 European social workers, experienced in ‘social pedagogy’, to lead an experimental pilot programme on the way children’s residential care homes are run. The practice helps children ‘develop and flourish’, rather than just meeting their immediate needs and ensuring their safety. Child care advisers welcome the move, but say its success would need more money being invested in residential care homes and in training staff, with one person saying that without trained and skilled workers, residential care was tantamount to ‘warehousing’ children.

A House of Commons’ select committee has warned that the state is failing in its duty to act as a parent to children in care by not protecting them from sexual exploitation, homelessness and crime. In its report the children, schools and family committee calls for a radical overhaul of the system to ensure that the most vulnerable children get the services they require. It says that concerns for the happiness and welfare of the 60,000 children in care should be at the heart of the system and that government is ‘too timid’ in demanding that health services and the criminal justice and asylum systems give special consideration to looked-after children.

A couple who were terrorised by a gang had their £100,000 award for damages taken away by appeal judges, who ruled that although they had ‘every sympathy’ for the family, the London borough of Hounslow had no duty of care towards them. The couple, who have learning disabilities, had help from the council’s social services department, but the lower court decided that the council should have realised that the couple were in imminent danger and should have been moved elsewhere. Hounslow argued that duty of care was owed only to children, and the appeal court agreed.