Disabled woman says council helped drive her to suicide attempts over ‘impossible’ care assessment deadlines

A local authority’s actions helped drive a disabled woman to attempt to take her own life, after it imposed an “impossible” two-week deadline upon her as part of a discriminatory social care assessment process.

Clare*, from Cambridgeshire, who has multiple health conditions, including a visual impairment, was told she needed to fill out an inaccessible form as part of a financial assessment.

She was told that if she wanted to keep more than £28 of her £110.40 a week daily living personal independence payment (PIP) she would have to provide detailed receipts, invoices and figures.

But she was given only two weeks to fill out the form and provide the evidence, even though council staff were aware of her history of mental distress and self-harm.

Her case is just the latest to expose the financial hardship and emotional harm caused by cash-strapped councils charging working-age disabled people for their care and support.

Cambridgeshire County Council had asked Clare to provide details of her disability-related expenditure (DRE), disability-related costs that can be considered when assessing how much a disabled person can afford to pay in care charges.

Even though she sent digital evidence showing DRE of thousands of pounds over the previous year, the council insisted she still had to complete its inaccessible form.

Because of her visual impairment, she needed a support worker to help her put the evidence together and fill in the council’s form, which had to be printed out and filled in by hand, and she found the process “too overwhelming and distressing to do quickly”.

She also found there was not enough space on the form to include more than a tiny proportion of all her disability-related expenses.

The distress caused by the council’s actions has now triggered two suicide attempts in the last few weeks, she says.

Now she wants to see all local authorities introduce safeguarding measures that would ensure they pay particular care when dealing with financial assessments of disabled people with a history of mental distress or self-harm, and others concerned about the assessment, and give them at least three months to complete the form and provide the necessary evidence.

The council was aware of her history of significant mental distress and suicide attempts when it imposed its original two-week deadline for her to provide detailed proof of her DRE in early September, she says.

But for the last three months, the council has refused to allow her a more reasonable deadline, other than allowing her a couple of short extensions.

It did offer support from her social worker to help her fill out the form, but Clare said this would have risked a conflict of interest as the social worker had previously dismissed many of the expenses she was hoping to claim for.

The whole three months was spent “panicking” about the “impossible deadlines”, she said.

She had asked to be warned when the last extension was due to expire, so she could request another one, but she said the council instead went ahead and disregarded all her DRE and charged her the full £138 a week – more than she receives in PIP – as a contribution towards a package of just 14 hours of council-funded support.

Clare said: “I told my social worker how suicidal it was making me and how I couldn’t sleep and was having panic attacks.”

The receipts she has collected – with the assistance of her support workers, who she has had to pay for this work – show she is spending far more every month trying to address the disability-related needs she faces in her daily life than she receives in benefits, the only income she receives.

She said: “My income is not enough to live on, really, but social services want all the PIP and a huge amount of what’s left as well.

“I have begged and pleaded with them, but they have no mercy on disabled people.”

The full-time university student is being left increasingly in debt by the council’s continuing refusal to make reasonable adjustments for her, and she has recently had to apply for another credit card so she can afford to eat and continue to study.

She has had to spend thousands of pounds in the last year on disability-related expenditure such as humidifiers, microwave steriliser bags, vinyl gloves, water filters and distillers, wash cloths, heat masks for warm compresses, citric acid for descaling and cleaning dehumidifiers, taxi receipts, supplements, food deliveries, as well as purchases of specialist headphones, screen protectors and audio equipment that she needs because of her visual impairment.

Clare told the council that its deadline “set me up to fail and sets me up for further reduced quality of life where I would have another appeal taking over my limited time and forcing me to engage with disability rights advice, legal rights advice, and providing mountains of evidence to overturn a discriminatory decision”.

Her ordeal has convinced her that every council should introduce a system that adds a marker on the files of disabled people who receive care and support and need “additional support” or express distress about the process.

This would impose a duty on the council to ensure the disabled person was able to cope with the financial assessment process and the “overwhelming, distressing form” and offer them support and the necessary deadline extensions.

She said: “I think the additional support marker would mean fewer people would try to harm themselves or take their own lives and would be less likely to be forced to refuse care because of the unaffordability of care charges.

“In a fair world, councils would not be charging vulnerable disabled people for care.

“At the very least, they could harm a few less people through denial of care and driving them into unbearable poverty and debt using social care charges.”

Anne Pridmore, founder and director of Being the Boss, who has provided advice to Clare, said: “Disabled people do not want to be living in a negative frame of mind.

“It accentuates your impairment if you’re having to provide evidence to support your claim.

“It’s far, far too complicated.”

Pridmore, who is running free online workshops for users of personal assistants with fellow disabled expert Iggy Patel, through the Bringing Us Together network, said: “Most disabled people are stressed out anyway with all they are going through.

“Everything you buy to do with disability is expensive so to have to prove that you’re using X number of incontinence pads a week in order to claim [DRE], that’s very, very stressful.”

She said the experiences of people who have been at their workshops showed the concerns about the DRE process that Clare has raised were “really widespread”.

Cambridgeshire County Council refused to discuss Clare’s case, even though she had provided permission for it to do so.

Instead, it said in a statement: “We understand how stressful and challenging financial assessments around social care can be, which is why the council’s adult social care team work with individuals on care and support options.

“Whilst we don’t comment on individual cases, the team always look at ways they can support and be more flexible to meet a person’s particular needs.

“Although there is a standard two-week deadline for financial assessment referrals, extensions are often given and other ways to support people are also offered, such as in-person support.

“We continue to work with and support the person to conclude their financial assessment process.”

*Not her real name

Further information on the campaign to end care charging is available here and here and here, and there is guidance on DRE here

The following organisations are among those that could be able to offer support if you have been affected by the issues raised in this article: Samaritans, Papyrus, Mind, SOS Silence of Suicide and Rethink

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