Unfortunately, from what I've seen of him I don't think Derek would have qualified for CHC.
If you take a look at the framework/checklist assessment tool, you can see that unless you score in the domains with an asterisk (priority domains are breathing issues, altered states of consciousnesses, challenging behaviors etc) it's near impossible to get funding.
Ultimately, CHC doesn't care about preventing things getting worse, in the way social care is meant to. A social care package should be created with the objective of preventing decline and encouraging maintaining or regaining independence, but CHC is designed to step in where the needs are primarily medical not "social" and/or where the decline is already unmanageable.
Social care needs are 'acts of daily living'. So things like eating/drinking, clothing/bathing, mobility, managing your home enviroment, managing money/correspondence etc. Which would have been Derek's primary need, as is the case with 99% of disabled/chronically ill people.
CHC focuses too hard on explicitly medical issues (rightly so, I guess, as it's the NHS after all) and this blocks thousands of people from getting care. Forcing them into endless disputes with their local authorities who will argue the toss over what's covered by social care, in the hopes of palming it all off to CHC. Who ultimately don't want to take anyone on unless they absolutely have to.
Sadly, CHC is a battle for everyone trying to obtain it. They don't want you to have it and unless you have the strength or support to fight tooth and nail, you ain't gonna get it!
It's been a while since I've gone through the CHC assessment with someone, but I've known people in absolute dire straights, needing PEG feeds and having horrendous skin breakdowns due to pressure ulcers and lymphoedema, and they've been denied simply because they didn't get a tick for struggling with breathing or behaviour issues (the priority domains).
Even if you score highly in all other domains, unless you've got at least one in a priority, you will not be given funding. At least not without putting up a massive fight, and potentially putting forward a legal challenge, and most people's cases are not strong enough to come close to winning in a judicial review etc.
Derek clearly didn't have any of the necessary serious issues to qualify for CHC funding, even if Kate had tried. The issues with breathing and challenging behaviour etc have to be consistant, not intermittent or related to transient issues, like a viral infection giving him a bad chest or something. So even though he was in and out of hospital, the very fact he could be discharged and managed with social care, would have worked against him qualifying for CHC.
Also, just because you get CHC one year, doesn't mean they won't rip it out of your hands at any given point. They remove CHC a lot more often and more easily than they do with other packages of care. And it's a Goddamned disgrace, frankly!
He would have qualified for PIP though, and she should have applied for that as it's not means tested and he would have got around £500 a month for his needs which would have helped offset some of the costs. But PIP is a whole other piss take that I'll avoid going into here.
The system is rigged. From the assessment stages, to funding, to even the complaints process. It's all designed to prevent people getting what they need in the name of saving money. Pounds before people all day long!
But it's not helped by the fact that people like Kate are too busy dodging taxes and creating questionable companies to do their creative accounting, so they can keep that little bit more of their wealth for an extra few bottles of champagne or a trip to the Maldives. The fact she's owing £700k to the taxman alone is a joke. That money could fund easily five or six care packages if it had been paid into the system.
She should not be allowed to sit there on national TV, giving it the old sob story and saying how awful it is for people in Derek's situation, when she's part of the fuckin' problem why these services are underfunded, and why vulnerable people are being left without care or fighting to get (and keep) every second of it that they are given.
She needs to understand how privileged she is to be able to afford to fund his care privately, AND to keep working and maintaining an income most of us can only dream of.
She is incredibly lucky that she wasn't left handling him entirely by herself, while waiting 90 weeks for a social care assessment to be done and signed off, and for them to 'get around to' arranging carers. Or to be fed one of the numerous lies social workers spout about what is/isn't funded by social care, getting mugged off by people who are supposed to help and support you. Being forced to provide unpaid care because a social worker has led you to believe that's the only option, etc etc etc etc....
OR more still - to live in constant fear of a care package being reduced or removed entirely due to council's cost cutting, where they use an annual review as an excuse to see what care can be cut and what more can be forced onto family members.
OR worse still - being told "sorry, you're too expensive to keep at home, so let's shove you off into a residential care placement". These are issues I see every single day for disabled/chronically ill people and it absolutely enrages me.
She hasn't got a fuckin' clue about what real people experience in the system, and like I said, she's part of the problem and she definitely has not done anything to help with a solution since she's started banging this drum the second Derek took ill. She's done duck all for real people, and will continue to do duck all for real people, because she's too busy making other people's struggles about her.
And as someone else said - unpaid carers and people in need have been screaming about this mess for DECADES and no one's given a tit. It shouldn't have come to an ITV presenter's husband falling on hard times for people to be aware of how bad the social care system is, and how fucked we all are the second we fall ill (or get old) and need to turn to the government for help just to stay alive and somewhat well.
If you take a look at the framework/checklist assessment tool, you can see that unless you score in the domains with an asterisk (priority domains are breathing issues, altered states of consciousnesses, challenging behaviors etc) it's near impossible to get funding.
Ultimately, CHC doesn't care about preventing things getting worse, in the way social care is meant to. A social care package should be created with the objective of preventing decline and encouraging maintaining or regaining independence, but CHC is designed to step in where the needs are primarily medical not "social" and/or where the decline is already unmanageable.
Social care needs are 'acts of daily living'. So things like eating/drinking, clothing/bathing, mobility, managing your home enviroment, managing money/correspondence etc. Which would have been Derek's primary need, as is the case with 99% of disabled/chronically ill people.
CHC focuses too hard on explicitly medical issues (rightly so, I guess, as it's the NHS after all) and this blocks thousands of people from getting care. Forcing them into endless disputes with their local authorities who will argue the toss over what's covered by social care, in the hopes of palming it all off to CHC. Who ultimately don't want to take anyone on unless they absolutely have to.
Sadly, CHC is a battle for everyone trying to obtain it. They don't want you to have it and unless you have the strength or support to fight tooth and nail, you ain't gonna get it!
It's been a while since I've gone through the CHC assessment with someone, but I've known people in absolute dire straights, needing PEG feeds and having horrendous skin breakdowns due to pressure ulcers and lymphoedema, and they've been denied simply because they didn't get a tick for struggling with breathing or behaviour issues (the priority domains).
Even if you score highly in all other domains, unless you've got at least one in a priority, you will not be given funding. At least not without putting up a massive fight, and potentially putting forward a legal challenge, and most people's cases are not strong enough to come close to winning in a judicial review etc.
Derek clearly didn't have any of the necessary serious issues to qualify for CHC funding, even if Kate had tried. The issues with breathing and challenging behaviour etc have to be consistant, not intermittent or related to transient issues, like a viral infection giving him a bad chest or something. So even though he was in and out of hospital, the very fact he could be discharged and managed with social care, would have worked against him qualifying for CHC.
Also, just because you get CHC one year, doesn't mean they won't rip it out of your hands at any given point. They remove CHC a lot more often and more easily than they do with other packages of care. And it's a Goddamned disgrace, frankly!
He would have qualified for PIP though, and she should have applied for that as it's not means tested and he would have got around £500 a month for his needs which would have helped offset some of the costs. But PIP is a whole other piss take that I'll avoid going into here.
The system is rigged. From the assessment stages, to funding, to even the complaints process. It's all designed to prevent people getting what they need in the name of saving money. Pounds before people all day long!
But it's not helped by the fact that people like Kate are too busy dodging taxes and creating questionable companies to do their creative accounting, so they can keep that little bit more of their wealth for an extra few bottles of champagne or a trip to the Maldives. The fact she's owing £700k to the taxman alone is a joke. That money could fund easily five or six care packages if it had been paid into the system.
She should not be allowed to sit there on national TV, giving it the old sob story and saying how awful it is for people in Derek's situation, when she's part of the fuckin' problem why these services are underfunded, and why vulnerable people are being left without care or fighting to get (and keep) every second of it that they are given.
She needs to understand how privileged she is to be able to afford to fund his care privately, AND to keep working and maintaining an income most of us can only dream of.
She is incredibly lucky that she wasn't left handling him entirely by herself, while waiting 90 weeks for a social care assessment to be done and signed off, and for them to 'get around to' arranging carers. Or to be fed one of the numerous lies social workers spout about what is/isn't funded by social care, getting mugged off by people who are supposed to help and support you. Being forced to provide unpaid care because a social worker has led you to believe that's the only option, etc etc etc etc....
OR more still - to live in constant fear of a care package being reduced or removed entirely due to council's cost cutting, where they use an annual review as an excuse to see what care can be cut and what more can be forced onto family members.
OR worse still - being told "sorry, you're too expensive to keep at home, so let's shove you off into a residential care placement". These are issues I see every single day for disabled/chronically ill people and it absolutely enrages me.
She hasn't got a fuckin' clue about what real people experience in the system, and like I said, she's part of the problem and she definitely has not done anything to help with a solution since she's started banging this drum the second Derek took ill. She's done duck all for real people, and will continue to do duck all for real people, because she's too busy making other people's struggles about her.
And as someone else said - unpaid carers and people in need have been screaming about this mess for DECADES and no one's given a tit. It shouldn't have come to an ITV presenter's husband falling on hard times for people to be aware of how bad the social care system is, and how fucked we all are the second we fall ill (or get old) and need to turn to the government for help just to stay alive and somewhat well.
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