21 March 2018
PHOTO: Severely disabled face £27 loss per week, over changes to 'fairer charging'assessment.
A PIP/DLA cut coming into effect in June that is set to affect many severely disabled people - and almost no-one knows it's coming.
Back in the days of DLA, if you had higher rate DLA as part of a social care package, but did not receive night care, the night care element was disregarded from the assessment of how much a disabled person should pay towards their package.
However, since the change to PIP, this has stopped.
Now, the 'fairer charging' income assessment is changing. People are going to pay more for the same care package.
Hull City Council has been able to protect residents until June this year, 2018. Many other councils have been charging it for years. Other councils again aren't charging it still. It's a postcode lottery.
But then, they will be legally able to take up to a further £27 a week towards a care package.
This is a lot of money for some of our most vulnerable people to lose overnight. Note too that it is only the most disabled affected by this change as they receive the highest rates of PIP/DLA.
It is impossible to do anything to avoid the charge as that is the money that pays for the first part of the budget. The council funds everything above that amount.
There is a set of rules as to what counts as disability-related expenditure but they do not cover everything a disabled person may actually need and are a very top-down inflexible set of rules that doesn't apply to all needs.
This is just another way that councils are being forced to remove money from their most vulnerable residents in order to plug a funding gap created by government.
Many of the people paying this, even if they live to 70, wouldn't ever meet the £35,000 Dilnot care cap previously proposed. They will never have enough money to stop paying even if that cap was implemented.
They are too poor for protection.
TJ White, Hull
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