Farzanah
I do agree with you Luckygirl and after many refusals my mother was only awarded CHC because it appeared she was dying earlier this year. She hasn’t yet died but hasn’t improved either and is still in receipt of it.
I’m sure many people do fit the criteria for CHC but are refused because the budget is tight, and it is soul destroying battling, causing stress to oneself and loved one. Appeals must provide plenty of business for legal firms. It’s not cheap either.
I take CQC ratings with a pinch of salt too, after viewing lots of places. It’s can be a minefield. Even the better places are struggling with shortage of staff now.
Indeed so.
The problem is that if the NHS paid up for CHC funding for everyone who qualifies, it would go bankrupt. The problem is that under the NHS Act, the government is obliged to pay for care that is based on a medical need, and they have devised a system for avoiding this: complicated criteria for establishing this primary medical need, keeping quiet about it and not having ward staff, GPs and district nurses tell people of their rights, and keeping medical professionals up to speed on their patients' rights.
I have a friend who is battling to get this for her father. The district nurse refused to fill in the form as she said she could not do it, and that the patient was not yet terminally ill - two mistakes there: she is qualified to do it, and you do not have to be terminally ill to get it. So .... off she trots to the GP, clutching the form that I had downloaded for her and she had printed off. It has been there for 10 days now, with the receptionists saying that the doctors have not had time to do this. All this time a massive debt is being run up to pay for the live-in carer and the 4 times a day carer visits on top of this because his needs are so great, and of course the live-in has to have time off. He so obviously qualifies, but my friend is meeting a brick wall. The local CHC, whom she phoned, agree that he blatantly qualifies but can do nothing without the form.
The whole system needs reforming, but no-one will look at it: the NHS fears letting the cat out of the bag and providing widespread information, because they would not be able to afford the deluge of applications; abolishing it would bring it all out into the open and cause uproar. We see ads telling us we might qualify for many different benefits - anyone ever seen one flagging up CHC funding?
In the meantime, there are legal firms making a mint on advice and appeals.