I received the following email from Carmarthenshire-based Tracey Howells, the daughter of a WILG recipient. The following should provide hope and support for anyone wanting to oppose decisions made by local authorities. 

Those of you who have been following this blog closely, will not be surprised to read about yet more incompetence from local authorities. The good news for Tracey is that the Welsh Government have listened and responded to the #SaveWILG campaign by pausing the transition and introducing a new policy to protect WILG recipients. Full details can be read here.

This blog will be added to the WILG Voices page to demonstrate the dangers of relying on local authorities for responsible social care provision while underlining the dangers of neo-Liberalism.

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RE: ILF /WILG Myra Howells Social Services assessment with a reduction of 65% to her support package.

I feel that I must share the complications and distress my mother is experiencing with Carmarthenshire Council Social Services’ initiative to move her away from the Welsh Independent Living Grant (WILG). This transition remains unsuccessful and particularly unsettling to date, and I hope that by raising your awareness, it can help change the way this is being rolled out to alleviate the inevitable stress and anxiety it’s causing to all undergoing such assessments.

My mother is registered partially sighted and has been diagnosed with MS for almost 40 years. She has received ILF /WILG for many years and this has proved a major lifeline for her over this time. Indeed, she has taken great comfort from a protected ILF status, being one of a small number of recipients protected from losing the ILF until it finally closed.

The assessment with Carmarthenshire Council Social Services has now been completed, resulting in the proposal to drastically reduce my mother’s hours down from 34 hrs to 12 hrs a week. As such, this represents is a 65% reduction which we cannot accept. This reduction does not reflect the care and support she needs to enjoy her basic quality of life. We really feel that this is a disgraceful proposal, representing an arbitrary cut to meet budget targets, and relying on the assumption that any shortfall will be made up by goodwill and support from family and friends. As such, this approach goes against the fundamental principles of supporting and enabling our most vulnerable in society.

Background
My mother is severely disabled, retaining only the use of her left hand, head and neck. Nonetheless, she still has a very strong personality and knows what she wants. She is fiercely independent, managing to remain living at home and supported with her care partly from Social Services, and partly from employing personal assistants (PA).

During November 2011, my mother’s physical health deteriorated rapidly and she was in and out of Hospital for long periods of time. She was experiencing a lot of falls and incidents and to support her, I gave up a job I loved in S4C based in Cardiff to work closer to home. Unfortunately however, her condition continued to deteriorate and in July 2016, I moved to part-time hours, working 3 days a week and becoming one of my mother’s PA for a remaining 2 1/2 days. To date, this has worked very well and my mother has retained her spirit and independence, and has not been admitted to hospital since.

In November 2018,  a social worker for Carmarthenshire Council contacted me to request a review with my mother. At first, this wasn’t out of the ordinary because my mother did have occasional reviews with social services. The social worker called to see my mother in early December and quite early on in the meeting it became clear that the review was financial, clearly focusing on the ILF payments. This was extremely frustrating because a financial review was never mentioned at any time prior to the meeting, and as a consequence we were inadequately prepared for the detail of the questions. Further, the fundamental objective of the review became very clear during the discussion. When I confirmed to the social worker how much money my mother was getting from the ILF and how it was being spent, her immediate response was to tell me that my mother’s money would be cut and she wouldn’t get anywhere near what she was having now. This was even before she asked my mother any questions about her needs! Subsequent detailed questions focused on what I did for my mother, where again my answers were hampered by a lack of time to adequately prepare. At the end of the review, both my mother and I were left feeling deflated, anxious and annoyed at being unable to provide complete answers to the many questions. We really felt that social services had acted very unfairly by not disclosing the nature of the review to ensure we could not adequately prepare.

Within two weeks, we were contacted again by the social worker for a second review because she needed further information to complete the review. I explained that if she had been open and honest with me on the first phone call regarding the nature of the review, I could have prepared the care plan and we wouldn’t now have to put my mother through a second assessment. The second review was arranged and I prepared a full care plan of the weekly duties my mother’s PAs (including myself) performed. During the review, I kept being told by the social worker that the majority of the things I did for my mother was expected of me as a family member! Also, my mother has a cleaner once a week for 4 hrs who cleans the house and we were told that they wouldn’t support this, but rather they would get a firm in to clean the bathroom for hygiene purposes if needed. My further explanation that the cleaner’s been with my mother for 20 years, becoming close friends from the same village and providing a direct link to her community also failed to gather any consideration.

I have asked twice for a breakdown of how they’ve worked out the new hours, but simply been told that the assessment has determined that 1 PA for 12hrs a week is all that is required. When I asked about the appeals process, I was told there isn’t one and only a complaints procedure. I therefore asked for my mother to be reassessed by a different social worker and another visited on the 8th March. The recommendation from that meeting was that we have an independent assessment, and we are still awaiting this.

Currently, we are therefore in limbo awaiting the next WILG payment due on 19.04.2019, which of course at this stage, we are not even sure will proceed. This is naturally causing a lot of stress and anxiety for my mother and the family, and I’m sure we are not alone in going through such issues. Such practices impact the most vulnerable in our communities and need escalation to ensure we do not lose sight of the fundamental principles behind our social services. In this case, my mother is one of the luckier ones to rely on me to fight on her behalf, and I feel particularly sorry for any elderly and disabled who must be facing such arbitrary cuts all alone.
If you would like any other information please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Kind regards
Tracey Howells

Email: traceylh123@hotmail.com