Another Secret!
ADVOCACY

Another Secret!

Do you have any examples of best kept official secrets and invisible rights?

As I develop my advocacy services this year, I am obviously going to raise the visibility of the rights and responsibilities of the people I help.

BUT I will also spotlight how so often these matters are either hidden from view or wrapped up in so much red tape that the rigmarole involved puts genuine people off from claiming. This applies to all my data protection, discrimination, employment, equality, personal injury, student service, trading standards and welfare benefit claims.

And I found one more example of this invisible world before Christmas!

Described as the “best kept secret” in social care financing the NHS Continuing Healthcare Scheme (CHC) is basically FREE SOCIAL CARE available to a very wide range of adults* who might have thought they had to pick up the bill for expensive care. It’s not surprising that many people paid up when you consider that a recent survey showed that 75% of over 45’s had never heard of CHC!

CHC can fund costs of dementia patients and other people with long term complex health needs. It can be provided in a range of settings outside hospital such as your home or in a care home. There is a checklist on eligibility to complete which itself is quite cumbersome and for some damn silly reason puts options to tick in a CBA sequence rather than ABC! Is there a government department that does this on purpose to save money and sow further confusion? Hmm.

In 2020 the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman made recommendations to improve the CHC communications and assessment system to make sure people receive the support without having to jump through hoops and suffer further stress as well as economic hardship.

And it is important that people receive help to get through this Alice in Wonderland maze. I just have the one case that I helped to navigate through the system before Christmas, but on the positive side the Ombudsman revealed that more than 175,000 adults were considered for CHC in 2019/20 and about 112,000 were found to be eligible. ?Many thousands more though are clearly unaware of this potential lifeline! Encourage those you help to keep going and report any defects to the Ombudsman

CHC Assessments were suspended for five months last year due to COVID 19 lockdown measures but restarted in September.

More details in the link below.

Do you have any examples of best kept official secrets and invisible rights?

NHS continuing healthcare - NHS (www.nhs.uk)

* ?CHC is for adults. However, children and young people may receive a "continuing care package" if they have needs arising from disability, accident or illness that cannot be met by existing universal or specialist services alone.

Find out more about the children and young people's continuing care national framework on GOV.UK

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