It must be wrong to keep charging the elderly

The signatories are calling on the Cabinet member to reconsider his decision to increase the charges for a range of services to elderly people, such as:

• Community meal costs up by over a pound per meal.
• Hourly rate for home care to rise by 74%.
• Maximum weekly charge for care to go up by almost 400%.

Text of call-in:

The undersigned Councillors wish to support the call-in of the decision E1795 ‘Charging Policy for Adult Care Community Services’ taken by the Cabinet member for Adult Social Services and Housing, Cllr Vic Pritchard (WL 14-Mar-08). This paper is called-in for the following reasons:

· Home care rates are to rise from £8.04 to £14. This represents an increase of 74% which would seem to be an unfairly steep rate of increase the impact of which should have been given more weight in the decision making.

· Evidence is given that charges are being increased in line with those of neighbouring authorities. However no evidence is given that the difference in cost of living between authority areas has been taken into account.

· In section 6.2 pf the decision paper it is stated that only an estimated 90 service users will potentially be faced by domiciliary care charge increases. However in the same section it is stated that the Council expects an extra £100,000 of income from these 90 people. This equates £1111 per person on top of the charges they are already paying. This would seem to be disproportionate and unfair.

· Similarly, the charges for community transport are to rise by 50%, with an expected additional £133 income to the Council per user, per year. Again this seems disproportionate.

· Charges for community meals are to rise by 38% or £1.05 per meal. This will have a wider impact than some of the charges mentioned above given that 67,000 meals are served per year.

· No evidence is given that an assessment has been carried out of the impact on those residents who will be affected by several or all of these price increases. Many pensioners are on fixed incomes; with costs of food and fuel also rising, these charges increases could be the last straw.

· If costs go up residents may reduce their care. There is no evidence of a risk analysis of this possibility having been carried out.