Decision on adult day care costs in Portsmouth due after months of delay

During a meeting tomorrow, Portsmouth City Council's health and wellbeing boss, Councillor Matthew Winnington, will consider three options surrounding the system that was supposed to be decided in March before the pandemic hit.

Since September 2018 any adults in need of learning disability care services have been expected to cover their 'maximum assessed charge' replacing a scheme that saw costs capped at £60 a week. This left some families paying more than £250 a week for services.

Now Cllr Winnington will decide either to maintain the no cap policy, reinstate a financial cap just for learning disability services or agree to a cap for all adult social care services. He said: ‘When the cap was removed we were actually expecting a green paper from government not that long afterwards with major nationwide changes to how adult social care costs are covered. The problem was this has been delayed.

'Although it’s not a large amount of families that are affected, it's about what's reasonable to these families that previously had a £60 cap. It's just recognising in human terms it's been a very big change.’

As of February 2020, 90 per cent of clients in receipt of day care, community support and health and independence services, were either paying nothing (37 per cent) or up to £60 per week (53 per cent). Of the remaining 10 per cent of clients, seven per cent were contributing between £60.01 and £100 a week.​​​​​​​

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