Challenging council over care

Thank you great advice

The larger home is one of the safe and reasonable options surely marshy36, unless there’s evidence that it provides an unsafe standard of care? It will be regularly inspected by the Council, and the Healthcare Inspectorate so you could look up reports.
The best I think you’ll be able to expect if you can produce concrete evidence that the larger home can’t meet your mum’s needs is that the Council will find another one that doesn’t have top up fees which does meet them. My previous role was NHS, but was heavily involved in complex placement cases, and I’ve never known a case where a family was able to successfully argue that the council had to pay top up fees to place their family member in their home of choice. The only circumstances when they paid top up fees was if the person’s needs were so complex that they needed a specialist placement, falls would not fall in that category. Hopefully somebody who has recently worked in the field for a Council will be able to advise you.

All care and nursing homes are inspected and have a rating by CQC.
It would be very difficult to prove that a home was unsuitable if it meets the criteria that the council has assessed for your mother’s health needs. Importantly, as has been said the home you choose would need to have a contract with the Council to provide care at a price the Council will agree to.

I do know in my town there is only one care home within the Council price range. I think many Council’s allowances fall short of what many Home providers will accept. It’s a sad state of affairs.

But as I understand is the council has to provide a safe and reasonable option otherwise they have to pay for the more expensive home. Does anyone have any experience of dealing with this?

If the smaller home cannot provide care within the council’s contract rate, and from her savings/estate she isn’t able to pay top up fees, then unfortunately that home won’t be an option for your mum, and you won’t achieve anything by challenging them. Have you asked the Council whether there are any other homes without top up fees that you could look at, as an alternative?

Have you discussed this with them? Does the home you prefer have a contract with the council? If there is a small top up might that be worth paying fir your mum to be somewhere where you are happy.