In today’s Glasgow Evening Times, our Principal Solicitor Mike Dailly examines the dramatic rise in non-residential care charges for people in Glasgow.
The way the charging calculation is formulated is complicated but in short there’s a minimum income threshold a person is entitled to live on – from April this year that’s £156 per week.
It used to be that only half of the income above the minimum income threshold could be taken as a charge, but from April 2023 the Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership (GCHSCP) increased its so called “taper” to three quarters of a person’s disposable income.
Many people who rely on social care are disabled with social security benefits as their only source of income. How does the GCHSCP justify a 50% taper uplift when most social security benefits were only uprated in April by consumer price index inflation of 10.1%?
In today’s column, Mike examines the GCHSCP ‘s equality impact assessment and the lack of any accessible application form or process to apply for disability related expenditure (DRE) to be taken into account to reduce charges for those with disabilities in Glasgow. He explains how the lack of any statutory rules on DRE – unlike in England – places Scots with disabilities at a disadvantage to the rest of the UK.
While the Scottish Government has promised to scrap social care charges at some point in the future an urgent interim solution could easily be implemented now – read the full column here.
