Families accuse council of care costs 'scandal'

BUT CORNWALL COUNCIL REFUTES ANY ALLEGATIONS IT HAS DONE ANYTHING UNLAWFUL

- By LEE TREWHELA

DISTRAUGHT families are alleging a “systemic scandal” at Cornwall Council concerning their late loved ones’ care, which has led to some Cornish residents paying over £100,000 for treatment they believe should have been provided free by the NHS.

A grieving Looe resident, whose late parents both received complex care, received a bill for £80,000 out of the blue, which he claims was without explanation or documentation.

Tim Tully said: “I contacted the council asking for the reason for this charge and was informed that it was for outstanding care home fees from 2006 for my parents.

“I wrote to the council asking for an explanation, but, still to this day, I have had no evidence presented to me to substantiate this ‘charge; and so I began to reach out to anyone I could think of to try to get some help to sort this problem out.”

One of those people is Pauline Hardinges, also of Looe, who won a £30,000 refund from Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Primary Care Trust (now known as NHS Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Board - ICB) in 2009, when the NHS body refused to fund 24-hour care for her mother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s.

She defied a gagging order to announce the victory in order to help others in a similar situation.

Mrs Hardinges spent months fighting red tape before getting the payout to cover the bills she'd paid for 95-year-old Dorothy's care. Health chiefs ruled Dorothy's needs were “social” not medical and Mrs Hardinges was forced to use her life savings to pay for a nursing home until the money was reimbursed.

She now gives advice to others who believe family members’ nursing care needs - usually their elderly parents - should be covered by NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC) but is wrongly labelled as social care, meaning the costs have to be shouldered by families themselves.