Last November, the Scottish Health Campaign Network met with Andy Kerr to discuss various health issues. I was with them, and for that particular meeting I chose to ask a number of questions on mental health provision and care in the community. One of the questions I asked was; what was happening about the funding of people who were moved from continuing care beds in hospitals, into care homes in the community? The reason that I asked this question was because of the Pamela Coughlan case down in England, which became a benchmark case in health care.
Pamela Coughlan(above)was severely injured in a road accident some twenty years ago. She needed professional medical care, as well as help with feeding and dressing, which came under the title of personal care. At first she was placed in an NHS nursing home which specialised in long term care of this type. However, when plans were mooted to shut the nursing home and move the patients into local authority residential homes, Pamela was told that the funding of her care was no longer the NHS's responsibility. The social services were to provide funding and this would be means tested. Pamela challenged this decision in court, and to cut a long story short, she won. The court decided that the NHS trust had acted unlawfully and that they were responsible for the funding of Pamelas medical care. The social services would be responsible for personal care.
This issue is now coming to Scotland. In my own area, Lanarkshire, Kirklands hospital which catered for people with severe learning disabilities is closing. Hartwoodhill, which dealt with brain injury and psychiatric disorder, is closing. And the number of continuing care beds is being reduced. In short, there is a considerable number of people with significant medical needs being put into the community or nursing homes. But is the funding going to follow them?
Last week Frontline Scotland attempted to come up with an answer to that and they found that, like England, we are seeing a situation where people like this are being asked to fund their own care and they have no idea that the NHS should still be funding them. . This involves huge sums of money; medical care is more expensive than normal nursing care and the only way that the person can fund it is to sell their home. The buck for funding these people has been passed from the NHS, to local authority, to the person themselves and it's completely illegal. But because the NHS up here has not been challenged on this point, it is still following the old guidelines and hoping to get away with it. It's time it was challenged.
