Letter: County Council Care Should Not Be For Profit

Published on: 8 Oct, 2020
Updated on: 8 Oct, 2020

This guide is written in conjunction with Surrey Council Adult Social Care

From: Name and address supplied

The Conservative Coronavirus Act allowing councils to downgrade care for the disabled bodes a grim future for those in my condition. It is an appalling abdication of morality and a wicked, right-wing-driven travesty of justice. I have little doubt, born of first-hand experience, that this Tory-dominated Surrey County Council will take full advantage of this.

I am an 80-year-old widower, living alone and disabled to a degree that leaves me largely housebound and using walkers. Although I do have good support from friends and neighbours and an Attendance Allowance, I can manage a bit of cooking but I have to pay for shopping, gardening, window-cleaning, home cleaning, laundry and ironing, podiatry, home barber and now, after a second stroke this summer (luckily a relatively minor one), assisted showers with private carers. Thereby hangs the tale.

But all that means I have to dig into my State pension to fund the excess. Luckily, my late wife and I paid into the State Second Pension so I am not on the breadline, although I do resent paying £1,000 income tax, being penalised, as I see it, for being prudent and working from the age of 15 till I was 73.

After the second stroke, for a few weeks, I had free NHS care but that ran out and the county council supplied a list of care agencies. I decided on one for two assisted showers at under £40 a week because I can wash myself, with difficulty, on other days. The price was on top of all my other living costs so the county council requested copies of three months of my bank statements. I decided that by squeezing here and there and giving up a couple of small luxuries I wouldn’t need to be a burden on other council taxpayers.

That’s when the county council told me I’d have to pay them an extra £295 “arrangement fee”, plus £5 more a week for “administration”. That is how helpful our county council is to disabled residents who need help. I felt that extortionate, cut off communication and went private.

More than a couple of years ago, I clashed with the council over care costs. I’d had a bad fall, broken my neck and suffered other damage that required hospital care. After release, I needed 30 minutes of care a day, seven days a week. At one stage, the council tried to charge me £122 a week although the care company was billing them for only £97.15. The council refuse to explain the discrepancy.

That fight took five months and I wound up paying only £73 a week. That was my Attendance Allowance.

How do you think people in my position feel when we see Surrey County Council throwing nearly £250,000 of our council tax cash at consultants in an abortive, ill-timed effort to control the welfare of all 1.2 million Surrey residents, a failed power-grab later revealed to be a Conservative Party political attempt to dominate our national grassroots and threaten democratic rule?

The tentacles are certainly stretching wide from Downing Street, only the suckers are down here, called the people, the ones paying the price of being exploited.

Roll on next May’s elections.

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