Once again, no link to the judgement under discussion.

Absolutely disgusting. This story deserves more exposure.

Where does this £22000 a year come from? It’s not tenable for every person who can not look after themselves to have their own personal care worker at such a price.
Although it would help with the unemployment situation. I would like this job if it becomes available, as it’s far more than I’m earning at present.
To me it sounds like the woman can no longer live at home. When I visited Ireland as a child, my grandparents used to have chamber pots under all the beds, as the toilet was a wooden outhouse that wasn’t very nice to visit after dark.

This case has recieved a lot of exposure on TV news. I agree that you cannot justify spending £22k for every person that is unable to go to the loo by themselves. Ths is not affordable.

Put baldly the Court said that she could shit her bed to save £22000 a year, and that this was no indignity. In this case the law really is an ass!

You’ve not read the judgement have you? Lord Brown says the opposite to this, in terms, on pg 13. As does Lord Walker:

I totally disagree with, and I deplore, Lady Hale’s suggestion that the decision of the majority would logically entitle a local authority to withdraw help from a client so that she might be left lying in her faeces day and night, relieved only by periodic changes of absorbent pads or sheets.

This case has recieved a lot of exposure on TV news. I agree that you cannot justify spending £22k for every person that is unable to go to the loo by themselves. Ths is not affordable.

Taking this cut into consideration, the council is now spending £23,400 annually on her care. Presumably it was spending £45,000 annually, which really does seem like rather a lot.

Damon @ 3

I would like this job if it becomes available, as it’s far more than I’m earning at present.

I bet you wouldn’t last ten minutes in it, your type normally say this type of thing without really understanding the job or what it actually entails. But there are jobs in this market and you are perfectly able to apply for one, once you have the qualifications.

Do tell us of how you got on with the application process, or are you just bullshitting?

To me it sounds like the woman can no longer live at home.

No doubt ‘to you’ it does ‘sounds like that’, but if you think that putting an otherwise healthy woman in an old people’s home is the answer, then you must be a bit thick. If you are assuming that this would save £22,000 a year then that has confirmed it.

Um, Jim, there are homes which are dedicated to dealing with people who are disabled, and not necessarily old.

As I’m reading the judgement, though, the lady in question has refused to even consider the option. Certainly she has the right to refuse and remain in her home, but quite understandably some levels of care, which can be delivered more cheaply in a home, might not be available there.

Fungus @ 4

As opposed to what? People lying in their own shit? Taking the eldery into care homes? A trip to dignitas?

What, fungus? What is it the Tory scum think we should do with this woman?

Tim J @ 6

I thought that the ‘New Model Tory Party’ was about allowing people to live with dignity? I thought that Cameron, in speech after speech tells us that the State will help people live as independently as possible.

Here’s what I think. Yes, fairness means giving money to help the poorest in society. People who are sick, who are vulnerable, the elderly – I want you to know we will always look after you. That’s the sign of a civilised society, and it’s what I believe.

What he meant was ‘here, stick those up your arse and wash them away in the morning’.

And you seriously wonder why the decent people in this Country hate your Party? All those cabinet ministers you know? The ‘decent people’ you talk about? I bet they agree with this, ‘good enough for the old’.

You really think we all want the same thing, just argue about the delivery of it? You think I want OAPs shitting themselves? You think most of the Country wants elderly women shitting themselves?

Apart from your Tory mates, whom have you heard saying ‘A good method of looking after stroke victims is to fit them with pads, so they can shit themselves in the comfort of their own beds’?

Has it never occurred to you that the only people who think like that are sociopaths?

Of course, not only should we focus on how the ‘Big Society’ manifests itself in reality, but remember we can no longer take the State to court to battle the State in court because the Nasty Party have cut the legal aid budget. They knew they were going to crap on people and remove the only recourse they have via the courts.

But not ‘scum’, eh? Merely mistaken and perhaps misunderstood. Imagine my distress at the thought of the Tory lambs misrepresented as Nasty scum, merely because they want old people to shit themselves.

Leon @ 8

Um, Jim, there are homes which are dedicated to dealing with people who are disabled, and not necessarily old.

How much would it cost to house this woman in such a home? And to what extent would the person she excluded suffer as a result?

Jim;

Again, from reading the report (try it), there was a space offered to her. And there are on-call staff at those places precisely for things like night calls.

Let’s look at what the Supreme Court justices (with the honourable exception of Lady Hale) said was reasonable: telling someone they must deliberately wet themselves. That’s all that matters in this case, how we view the right of disabled people to expect normal standards of dignity.

Would you be willing to wet yourself because your local authority found it more convenient? Would the judges who cast this verdict? And if the answer is no, then how can you ethically justify demanding that of someone else.

Throwing a bucket of water over a learning disabled patient in a care home because you are a socially inadequate bully, asking a disabled elderly woman to wet herself because you are a council official in pursuit of cost savings, are they really so morally far apart?

The Supreme Court is supposed to be the ultimate defence of the moral and ethical standards of our society. In this case it failed miserably.

Leon @ 11

Again, from reading the report (try it),

Okay, then, tell us where.

13 It’s linked to in comment 1.

Can she not even use one of these bedside toilets?

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=bedside+toilet&FORM=BIFD

I bet you wouldn’t last ten minutes in it, your type normally say this type of thing without really understanding the job or what it actually entails.

Well do tell us what the job entails apart from helping her to the toilet Jim.
It’s overnight in her home while she sleeps. What else is there to do? Make breakfast?

The Supreme Court is supposed to be the ultimate defence of the moral and ethical standards of our society. In this case it failed miserably.

No it isn’t. The day that we look to the courts to determine and enforce moral and ethical values is the day that we turn into a theocracy. Courts are there to determine the correct application of the law, and if you are able to understand the judgement, there is little doubt that they were doing precisely this.

I’m disabled and I have loss of dignity and sadly being disabled most of us are the same, this lady wanted a person to be with her all night, so if she pooed or if she wee’d then she could be changed and if she did nothing.

The sad fact is I wear a nappy to bed and a pad during the day if I mess during the night I have to accept it until the morning. Of course I can always cut my throat that way both the Labour party and the Tories can say ah well another one off the list.

I have gone from twenty four hour care down to an hour my disablity did not get better, they just told me it was labours care in the community and pissed off.

get annoyed about the Tories do not forget who started this, Blair.

@9 Jim,

It would be nice if we had unlimited resources and everyone could have their own dedicated care workers, but unfortunately the line has to be drawn somewhere. I do not see how you can justify this £22k cost.

Only today the OBR published a report setting out how much elderly care is going to cost the ecomomy.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/8171181/Further-austerity-needed-to-pay-for-elderly-care-says-OBR.html

“Economists’ fears were echoed by the OBR in its updated forecasts on Monday. The fiscal watchdog said: “If left unaddressed, upward pressure on spending from the ageing of the population might well … eventually put public sector net debt on an unsustainable upward trajectory.” It added “policy changes” would be needed. “

It’s worth pointing out that the Supreme Court has just one woman sitting on it. Lady Hale disagreed with the other four judges and says she would have found for Ms McDonald. This points out the extremely narrow range of life experience, background and ability to empathise in the SC – rather than being an ass, it is overwhelmingly white, male, private school educated and of the elite. It needs to be far more diverse if judgments so lacking in compassion and human kindness are to be avoided in future.

If she can’t use a bedside toilet she must be totally bed bound.
Don’t they have any technical answers to her predicament? Some special bed with a toilet compartment built into it? Or whatever astronauts use?
A futon on the floor next to a hole in the ground toilet?
If she can’t even use that then she really can’t do anything at all.
In Morocco they would have a simple solution for this.

Damon @ 15

You said you would want to do the job, yet you haven’t a clue what the job entails? Well isn’t that nice?

Fungus @ 18

It would be nice if we had unlimited resources and everyone could have their own dedicated care workers, but unfortunately the line has to be drawn somewhere.

It all depends on where you draw the line though, eh? The choices this woman has are:

1) Shit and pee herself in bed.
2) Move into a care home.

Where was Cameron’s covenant regarding ‘choice’? Cameron drones on and on and on about choice among the public sector, about how people should be at the heart of the decision making process.

Now before the election, we were told that the Tories were going to cut ‘needless bureaucracy & waste’, now we have found it what they mean by ‘waste’. This woman lies in her own shit at night because the Tories think that giving her care is a waste of money.

@Damon Someone may be able to move around outside of bed, via whatever mobility aid they use, without being able to get themselves out of bed under their own power and without being ‘bed bound’. Disability tends to be awkward and inconsistent, not the absolute can do/can’t do that non-disabled people imagine. Someone may be essentially independent of the need for support in most of their life while absolutely needing outside aid in one small area. As I understand it the limiting mobility issue in this case is being able to get out of bed safely without the aid of another person. This isn’t a case of no one having thought of a solution, but of the only solution maintaining her dignity and independence being the availability of a carer to help with the process several times per night.

Suggestions like a futon on the floor simply fail to understand all of the issues, not simply toileting. If a transfer is difficult at bed level, think how much more difficult it would be at floor level.

Cuts are a very good way of exposing the tories and the tory trolls and their love of other peoples suffering.

Tories just don’t like it unless someone else, less fortunate is suffering. That is probably because most of them are psychotic.

One aspect of the decision which is being overlooked is that the problem would not exist but for her refusal to move to sheltered housing. If this is a worse fate then wetting the bed then the housing must be very poor. I can fully understand her desire to stay in her own home but there must be a limit as to how much the council can be expected to pay to facilitate this. If not 22k, then what is that limit? And if one accepts that there must be a limit, then surely it is for the elected council, rather than the court, to set it.

Having set that, I’d be curious to know what the legal bill was for all this.

It’s worth pointing out that the Supreme Court has just one woman sitting on it. Lady Hale disagreed with the other four judges and says she would have found for Ms McDonald. This points out the extremely narrow range of life experience, background and ability to empathise in the SC – rather than being an ass, it is overwhelmingly white, male, private school educated and of the elite. It needs to be far more diverse if judgments so lacking in compassion and human kindness are to be avoided in future.

Here is one of those white male judges: the appellant [Miss McDonald] “has declined the offer of moving to one of the borough’s extra care sheltered housing schemes.” In other words, the appellant specifically refused that very solution which Lady Hale mentions.

You didn’t read the judgement, did you?

Jim,

It all depends on where you draw the line though, eh? The choices this woman has are:

1) Shit and pee herself in bed.
2) Move into a care home.

Inaccurate. Did you read the judgement? First, she will not shit herself – she has a bladder problem, not a bowel problem. Second, the respondent invited her to choose how to deploy, in terms of timing and duration of visits, the weekly sum of £450 available for carer’s visits. In 2008 they offered to put her in touch with the Home Share Scheme, under which someone such as a female student might have given Miss McDonald help at night in return for rent free accommodation, but she declined because she did not want a stranger living in her house. In 2010 they offered her a move to one of RBKC’s Extra Care Sheltered Housing schemes, but Miss McDonald did not want to consider this.

They have offered her incontinence pads / sheeting but she does not want to use them because she is not incontinent and she thinks it would be undignified. Of course she is entitled to that view. But the authority has to decide how best to distribute the money – paying for her to have an official in her own home to move her during day and night to the toilet has been deemed too expensive. What would you trade-away to give Miss McDonald what she wants? Or would you think, like Lady Hale, that the Extra Care Sheltered Housing scheme is a reasonable compromise? Or that a female student is a reasonable compromise?

This woman lies in her own shit at night because the Tories think that giving her care is a waste of money.

Nonsense.

I have to say, in light of the quotes provided by UKliberty, that this is starting to look less like “woman forced to rely on incontinence pads due to Tories hating state subsidy” and more like “woman holds out for most expensive option possible despite much more reasonable options being available”.

It annoys me to repeat a right-wing cliche, but there really is a limit on how much we can spend on individuals who need help, if only because that same amount of money could possibly be used to help more people if spent elsewhere. If there was only one way to give this woman a decent standard of living, I’d say we should pay for it even if it cost twice as much. But it really does seem as if the authorities have tried several decent solutions and she’s refused them all.

she has a bladder problem, not a bowel problem.

Well here’s the solution then.

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=female+bedpan&view=detail&id=D2FC158F411CAAB31EB4FF5BC4F5CE26A7D22F0A&first=31&FORM=IDFRIR

Simple as that. What’s all the fuss about? When I go camping in my van I sometimes have a bottle handy if I can’t be bothered to go outside at night.

@26

“They have offered her incontinence pads / sheeting but she does not want to use them because she is not incontinent and she thinks it would be undignified. Of course she is entitled to that view. ”

And you don’t think it would be undignified? I wonder if your opinion would change if it was one of your loved ones in a similar position?

9. Jim

I thought that the ‘New Model Tory Party’ was about allowing people to live with dignity? I thought that Cameron, in speech after speech tells us that the State will help people live as independently as possible.

As independently as possible. How is it possible to make sure this woman lives more independently? She has been given every option and rejected them all but the most unreasonably expensive one.

Here’s what I think. Yes, fairness means giving money to help the poorest in society. People who are sick, who are vulnerable, the elderly – I want you to know we will always look after you. That’s the sign of a civilised society, and it’s what I believe.

Good for you. And yet there is a limit. There is simply a limit to how much money we have that we can then spend. We have reached that limit. So we have to decide what is most important and what is less important and focus on funding the former. We cannot give everything to everyone.

You really think we all want the same thing, just argue about the delivery of it? You think I want OAPs shitting themselves? You think most of the Country wants elderly women shitting themselves?

I tend to think that everyone in the country does want the same thing. But the reality is that no matter what you do, OAPs will shit themselves. Old age is a terrible thing and we can mitigate some of it, but no more.

But not ‘scum’, eh? Merely mistaken and perhaps misunderstood. Imagine my distress at the thought of the Tory lambs misrepresented as Nasty scum, merely because they want old people to shit themselves.

A Labour council does all it can to help this woman, and yet you blame the Tories. Good one Jim.

UKL @ 28

First, she will not shit herself – she has a bladder problem, not a bowel problem.

Ah, well, thats all right then. I mean if she is unable to get up to pee at night, she will be doubtless be able to spring into action is she needs to open her bowels.

Nope, you do not squirm your way out of it that easily. The Tories told us they could cut back on ‘waste and bureaucracy’. Cameron is on record as saying:

“If ministers come to me with cuts in frontline services,.
they will be sent away”.

What would you trade-away to give Miss McDonald what she wants?

Does that ring a bell? Time to renege on that? Too far back for the electorate to remember, perhaps? On the other hand, we have also been told by Francis Maude that we were only be going to back to 2007 levels of spending. However, this attempt by the council to convert her own bed into a toilet goes back to November 2008, after she had been in receipt of this treatment for a year or more. She fell in 2006.

SMFS @ 30

Good for you. And yet there is a limit. There is simply a limit to how much money we have that we can then spend. We have reached that limit. So we have to decide what is most important and what is less important and focus on funding the former. We cannot give everything to everyone.

That quote was from David Cameron and yes there is a limit to the spending, but we were told ‘no cuts to frontline services’ and that we would cut waste. However, you people think that action taken to stop the disabled from lying in their own crap is ‘a waste’.

A Labour council does all it can to help this woman, and yet you blame the Tories. Good one Jim.

Labour? Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council?

Are you attempting to bullshit us here? Are you trying to sneak that one past us?

Typical Tory Scum, trying to lie its way out of a problem.

As a basic principle of care, someone should be assisted to live independently* in the community for as long as they are able. There are many disabled people living in the community with far more acute care needs than Mrs McDonald, c.f. the Independent Living Fund, which is also under severe threat from the Tories. This erosion of care threatens all disabled people, with councils increasingly moving to meeting only ‘critical’ needs and many people seeing increases in their care costs exceeding anything Dilnot might have called reasonable, most spectacularly in this case reported by one of my colleagues at Where’s the Benefit: http://wheresthebenefit.blogspot.com/2011/07/its-going-up-by-how-much.html where a disabled woman has been told the part of her care costs charged to her is increasing from £21/wk to £1464/wk. WTB also has several articles looking directly at the implications of the McDonald judgement.

The details of the McDonald case are to a degree irrelevant as in many ways it is the precedent being set that is more important. Kensington and Chelsea council is the wealthiest borough in the country with 1 in 6 earning £60K+, the money to fund the support Miss McDonald needs could be found if necessary, and indeed has been until recently. But local authorities, under pressure to make cuts from central government, increasingly view adult social care as an expensive area of their budgets (which to a degree it is, but expensive can still be good value), with a very low degree of electoral influence, and that makes it, in their eyes, an ideal area to cut, because no matter the severity of the impact on disabled people, we don’t have the political clout to make difficulties for them come the next election, which is not the case for other areas of potential cuts. The McDonald judgement gives local authorities in general apparent carte blanche to slash adult social care, no matter the deleterious consequences to those at the sharp end.

For the disability community, the consequences of the cuts for individual disabled people such as Miss McDonald are obvious, but more than that they represent a severe threat to something we have been reclaiming for the past 40 years, our right to live in the community as independent adults. We have moved beyond being satisfied with life lived locked away in the attic, in hospitals, or wherever. Disabled people have claimed our independence and our right to live independently in the community is established under Articles 3, 4, 9, 18, 25, 26, and 28 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, which the UK is subject to both as a signatory and via legal precedent establishing the Convention as a guiding document for disability cases brought before the European Court of Human Rights (Article 15, Freedom from Degrading Treatment, is also likely to apply in the case of Miss McDonald and potentially in others).

This isn’t going away any time soon, Miss McDonald’s case is likely to go to Europe and it probably won’t be the last. This judgement threatens a major element of disability rights and disabled people can’t be given a pat and told not to worry their little heads about it anymore (though I do wish someone would point this out to Maria Miller).

* In the context of disabilty, and for every occurrence above, ‘independently’ refers to being in control of your own life, in your own home, no matter the assistance required, rather than living in supported accommodation where the decisions tend to be made for you.

Mr S Pill,

@26

“They have offered her incontinence pads / sheeting but she does not want to use them because she is not incontinent and she thinks it would be undignified. Of course she is entitled to that view. ”

And you don’t think it would be undignified?

Um, in fact I do think it would be undignified.

I wonder if your opinion would change if it was one of your loved ones in a similar position?

I wonder when people will stop imagining things about other commenters.

Jim @31, I note you dealt with the weakest of my points but not the substantive one.
Also, I have no idea why you continue to address me as if I am a Tory or have any influence over Tory policy.

The fact is that the authority has a finite amount of money. It can raise more, of course. (It can raise ever more, until people refuse to pay or move away.) But ultimately there is a finite pot and many people making demands of it. How should the authority distribute the pot? Giving Miss McDonald what she wants means something else is necessarily traded away.

I applaud Miss McDonald for attempting to assert her rights and independence – good on her. But ISTM the authority (and the Supreme Court) was not quite the devil some have painted it to be. Miss McDonald was offered a few choices, of which incontinence pads were but one:

1. “choose how to deploy, in terms of timing and duration of visits, the weekly sum of £450 available for carer’s visits”

2. “offered to put her in touch with the Home Share Scheme, under which someone such as a female student might have given Miss McDonald help at night in return for rentfree accommodation”

3. “offered her a move to one of RBKC’s Extra Care Sheltered Housing schemes”

4. offered incontinence pads

All refused. ISTM she is entitled to refuse option 4, but option 2?

This isn’t going away any time soon, Miss McDonald’s case is likely to go to Europe and it probably won’t be the last.

Um, good luck with that. This is from the Supreme court judgement on the merits of the human rights angle to the case:

I also share Rix LJ’s view that the appellant cannot establish an interference here by the respondents with her article 8 rights. I add only that, even if such an interference were established, it would be clearly justified under article 8(2) – save, of course, for the period prior to the 2009 review when the respondents’ proposed care provision was not “in accordance with the law” – on the grounds that it is necessary for the economic well-being of the respondents and the interests of their other service-users and is a proportionate response to the appellant’s needs because it affords her the maximum protection from injury, greater privacy and independence, and results in a substantial costs saving.

The breach of human rights argument is extremely weak.

“Also, I have no idea why you continue to address me as if I am a Tory or have any influence over Tory policy.”

Because Jim doesn’t feeel comfortable unless he can convince himself that he’s fighting off an army of “eugenicist Nazi Tory-supporting bastard fucking scum-cunts”? That’s my analysis, anyway.

37 – But you would say that, because you’re a Tory.

Chaise @ 37

A thread in which the disabled are having their services removed and guess what? You turn up and guess what? You immediately take the side of those demanding that the disabled woman be forced to lie in their own shit to save Council tax payers a few quid.

Not surprised the when given enough rope…

For further questions your honour!

BTW the Tories are not acting like Nazis in this instance, they are acting like Tories.

Jim,

So to be clear, your solution is to allow everyone with a relatively minor disability in terms of what needs care (and this is – I have had all four of my grandparents gradually deteriorate and lose more and more functions before their deaths) choose how much money should be spent on them?

If that is your argument, fair enough. It’s honest and human-centred. Financially impossible, but what the hell eh?

I worry though that your argument is based on the tabloid-style presentation of Richard’s original post, and not the actual judgement.

Briar @19,

It’s worth pointing out that the Supreme Court has just one woman sitting on it. Lady Hale disagreed with the other four judges and says she would have found for Ms McDonald. This points out the extremely narrow range of life experience, background and ability to empathise in the SC – rather than being an ass, it is overwhelmingly white, male, private school educated and of the elite. It needs to be far more diverse if judgments so lacking in compassion and human kindness are to be avoided in future.

Nice example of gender stereotyping there. Lady Hale went to Richmond School for Girls (we’re talking top ranked northern public school there) and Cambridge.

For reference, Lord Walker: Downside and Cambridge (very similiar background there)
Lord Kerr: St Colman’s College Newry (Catholic School) and Queen’s Belfast.
Lord Dyson: Leeds Grammar (despite the name, an independent) and Oxford
Lord Brown: Stowe and Oxford.

So the odd one out would be Lord Kerr, then Lord Brown (who went to a southern school), if any, unless you actually believe being female makes you think much more differently than a your education (northern indepent school then Oxbridge). Which I suggest might be consider sexism…

UKL @ 35

You are defending Tory policy, therefore it is not unreasonable to make that assumption. I have never voted Labour in my life, but f I defend Labour policy, feel free to bracket me among the Labour membership.

Kensington and Chelsea is not some kind of resource empty inner city council estate. It is one of the richest Boroughs in the Country.

However, we have been told, by Cameron that no ‘cuts to frontline services’ will occur, he peddled that line and no doubt some normal people were duped into voting for the liars based on this line.

Now they are finally ensconced in power and have found out that needless waste and pointless bureaucracy are not so abundant. When they said ‘wastes of money’ they meant money spent on the disabled.

Ms McDonald was given a service, a service she was happy with and in accordance to her care plan. The Tories chose to rewrite her care plan and offered her choices that were not in her original care plan. She was then offered a range of options that specifically excluded the choice she was happiest with.

I am not sure what was so bad about the other options, it is not my place to tell Ms McDonald how to live her life.

From the little I have read this is an open and shut case and would remain so no matter the Political colour of the Council.

On one hand, we have the individual and on the other we have the State. Now for the last year in general and this week in particular, we have been told that the days of
‘Take what your given’
‘The State knows best’
‘You are just a number’
‘Top down solutions’

Are over, to be replaced by
‘Localism’
‘Consumer choice’
‘The customer knows best’
‘The service shaped by the needs of the user’.

Okay in theory until someone actually says ‘Er, I was happy with the service I was getting, but the council stopped it and attempted to throw me in a home or force me to shit in my bed’ and then the Tory excuses come out. All of a sudden, we are expected to take what we are given, the council knows best and a top down solution imposed.

Vote Tory, get Tory.

@ 39 Jim

“A thread in which the disabled are having their services removed and guess what? You turn up and guess what? You immediately take the side of those demanding that the disabled woman be forced to lie in their own shit to save Council tax payers a few quid.”

Oh, yeah. I forget about this. When Jim isn’t acting like the Jonny Appleseed of hysterical insults, he enjoys making up lies about people who dare to disagree with him.

I’d ask you to show where I’m supporting people who want this woman to lie in her own shit, but I’ve asked you to back up your infantile accusations before, and… well, let’s just say a trend is emerging, and all evidence points to you being a pathalogical liar.

Jim,

However, we have been told, by Cameron that no ‘cuts to frontline services’ will occur, he peddled that line and no doubt some normal people were duped into voting for the liars based on this line.

Now they are finally ensconced in power and have found out that needless waste and pointless bureaucracy are not so abundant. When they said ‘wastes of money’ they meant money spent on the disabled.

Which would be fine, but this case is based on a decision made when Labour were in power…

From clause 2 of the judgement (linked to in post 1 above):

The respondents’ decision to reduce the sum allocated to the appellant’s weekly care was communicated by letter dated 21 November 2008 and was sought to be challenged by the appellant’s judicial review application made on 22 December 2008.

So even under Labour, this was considered unreasonable? It certainly is not a Conservative cut (unless you want to accuse the council of that – but you would then need to find councils that were willing to spend £45 000 or thereabouts on care to show that this was a normal option).

Jim,

Ms McDonald was given a service, a service she was happy with and in accordance to her care plan. The Tories chose to rewrite her care plan and offered her choices that were not in her original care plan. She was then offered a range of options that specifically excluded the choice she was happiest with.

It seems unlikely this particular case came to the council to decide – rather the social services team will have made the decision in light of their budget. All things considered, it is probably more likely that the person who made the decision was a member of the Labour party than the Conservative (social workers are one of those professions with a more left-wing distribution than the general population, although I have no source for this to hand), but far more likely they were a member of none.

Maybe Kensington and Chelsea cut their care budget in 2008? I don’t know – but you need to do more than make accusations here.

And one thing you have not answered – you believe it is up to Mrs McDonald how taxpayers money is spent, despite the fact she is not accountable? I am quite concerned by the logic that the recipient of government money should chose how much and how it is spent myself – government is a safety net remember, not a commercial provider of services.

Do some goddamn work, John.

Watchman @ 40

Not everyone, of course, but no-one is suggesting that. That’s a straw man, but not a serious one in this case. I accept you just trying to move the debate along.

There is a grain of truth there of course, in so far as my instinct is to let people live in their own homes for as long as possible.

I believe in freedom, therefore I am forced, yes, forced to accept that Ms McDonald has the right to be free from State interference on her day to day living as long as humanly possible. The concept that she should be forced to accept a lodger via the State sends a shudder to my very core. Perhaps the State will force you accept a lodger? I wonder how you would feel?

In fact, the Tories, believed in that principle when they introduced ‘care in the community’.

We are not talking about a typical case, here. We are talking about a stroke victim who was told they would never walk again. Obviously, had this woman never walked again and was unable to gain any kind of mobility, then the care home is the only viable solution in that context.

If someone in merely incontinent, then incontinent pads and sheets are entirely appropriate. If Ms McDonald’s health deteriorates so badly that her health plan requires to be modified, then so be it, everyone connected all sit round a table and negotiate a solution.

None of that happened in this case. Ms McDonald was given a care plan and the Tory bastards tore it up in her face, not because her needs changed, but because the needs of the State changed. Mrs McDonald is merely a cork that ebbs and flows with the tide as the bureaucrats play with themselves.

Her life is turned upside down, not because she went to the pub and had another stroke or whatever, her life is being turned upside down because the local Tory council decided that they could cut the disabled budget.

What happens to your grandparents is a matter for them, your siblings and yourself. I hope they get to stay in their own home for as long as possible and if the council can make that happen by reasonable steps, so be it.

I believe in freedom, therefore I am forced, yes, forced to accept that Ms McDonald has the right to be free from State interference on her day to day living as long as humanly possible.

Um, that’s not what she’s asking for. She’s asking for more State interference on her day-to-day living than the State is in a position to provide.

Chaise @ 43

he enjoys making up lies about people who dare to disagree with him.

I accused you of taking the side of people who go out of their way to attack the sick. Have you or have you not joined this thread to take the side of those who want to remove a service to the disabled?

Have I missed anything out?

Tim j @ 48

Um, that’s not what she’s asking for. She’s asking for more State interference on her day-to-day living than the State is in a position to provide.

No, because all she is asking for is help to get to the toilet at night, once moved to home she will be forced to eat, sleep, drink and everything else when and what the State decide.

Jim,

You are defending Tory policy, therefore it is not unreasonable to make that assumption.

Nonsense.

I’m not defending Tory policy (except perhaps incidentally), I don’t know what the Tory policy is – I’m discussing the OP and the judgement, the facts (as I understand them) of this particular case, and people’s views of it.

The Tories chose to rewrite her care plan and offered her choices that were not in her original care plan. She was then offered a range of options that specifically excluded the choice she was happiest with.

I am not sure what was so bad about the other options, it is not my place to tell Ms McDonald how to live her life.

Nor me, but, as Lady Hale said, Miss McDonald “too can be expected to co-operate with the authority in choosing the most economical and acceptable way of meeting the need that she has”. As you agree, a line must be drawn somewhere. It is not my or your place to tell Miss McDonald how to live her life, but it is for the authority to decide how to distribute the pot of money – there has to be some kind of negotiation or compromise, none of us can have everything we want. In the words of Lord Brown, “One might just as well say that logically, … it would be irrational not to supply a night carer to take the client to the commode, irrespective of cost”. That is the logical outcome of your argument, when you complain that “She was then offered a range of options that specifically excluded the choice she was happiest with”. I’m sure you don’t think she should be given something regardless of cost, but that is what is in effect you are saying.

All of a sudden, we are expected to take what we are given, the council knows best and a top down solution imposed.

In what sense is offering a person at least four choices, one of which involves her “choosing how to deploy, in terms of timing and duration of visits, the weekly sum of £450 available for carer’s visits”, ‘imposing’ a ‘top down solution’?

No, because all she is asking for is help to get to the toilet at night, once moved to home she will be forced to eat, sleep, drink and everything else when and what the State decide.

She’s been offered an opportunity to have help in her home at night, e.g. RKBC “offered to put her in touch with the Home Share Scheme, under which someone such as a female student might have given Miss McDonald help at night in return for rentfree accommodation”. She refused that opportunity, so we don’t know if that would have led to a satisfactory outcome.

No, because all she is asking for is help to get to the toilet at night, once moved to home she will be forced to eat, sleep, drink and everything else when and what the State decide

You either haven’t read, or haven’t understood the judgement in this case have you? Previously, in addition to a carer who visits during the day at an annual cost of some £23,000, she also had a permanent live-in night carer, at an additional annual cost of £22,000 to assist her to go to the lavatory twice or three times a night to urinate.

The Council has determined that this second cost is simply disproportionate to the benefit accrued, and that the money could be better spent elsewhere. It then gave her four alternatives – she could re-structure the day carer to give some night cover, she could move to assisted housing (not a care home), where she would live independently, but have round-the-clock help available, she could join a scheme whereby someone lives with her, rent-free, in return for helping her at night, or she could use incontinence pads. The clinical advice was that incontinence pads are a standard and appropriate remedy for functional incontinence. But other options were also given.

Mrs McDonald turned them all down, because she wanted (not unreasonably) to have the greater degree of care previously afforded to her. But the Council were also not unreasonable in deciding that this was no longer appropriate. All this talk of her sleeping in her own shit is simply emotive and dishonest.

Jim,

I believe in freedom, therefore I am forced, yes, forced to accept that Ms McDonald has the right to be free from State interference on her day to day living as long as humanly possible. The concept that she should be forced to accept a lodger via the State sends a shudder to my very core. Perhaps the State will force you accept a lodger? I wonder how you would feel?

She was not forced to accept a lodger, she was offered an opportunity to explore having a female student in her home to help her, she was also offered at least three other options.

Christ, I bet you are fed up with press inaccuracies, yet here you are bullshitting about commenters and situations.

Jim,

I believe in freedom from state interference, which is what I have as far as possible at the moment. But if I need money from the state, then that is itself state interference.

The point I’ve been making (possibly with a strawman-like (hayman?) extension of your arguments to be fair) is that the state, in whatever form, has a duty to ensure that money that it extracts from us is spent reasonably. Since spending £22 000 on caring instead of £45 000 would allow for someone else to be cared for at the same cost, then that seems reasonable (so long as adequate care is provided).

Wierdly (and this keeps happening) you seem to be taking a more libertarian type stance on this than me, that the state has no right to dictate to someone how they are cared for. I actually agree with this, but the state gains a right when it starts to take responsibility for paying for your care. And that is where the duty to spend the money in the best way possible comes in.

Watchman @ 45

social workers are one of those professions with a more left-wing distribution than the general population, although I have no source for this to hand

I suppose being a social worker requires a level of empathy with the disadvantaged than your average Tory could possibly muster, but even so, your comment regarding the political alignment of the actual decision maker is a pretty low. We both know that these people are not carrying out their own political agenda. They are carrying out policy on behalf of the elected council. However, if you have evidence of a Labour Council dong the same thing in a similar manner, you can be sure that I will be the first to condemn that too.

@ 54

But if I need money from the state, then that is itself state interference

She is not getting money from the State, she is getting help to taken to the toilet.

She is not getting money from the State, she is getting help to taken to the toilet

At the cost of £45,000 per year.

Jim @55,

I suppose being a social worker requires a level of empathy with the disadvantaged than your average Tory could possibly muster, but even so, your comment regarding the political alignment of the actual decision maker is a pretty low.

Might be worth rereading that? A certain amount of irony fits in there. I think the political leaning of social workers probably relates to the decision to take the career in the first place myself. I also suspect you either know very few Conservatives or have the misfortune to meet the unpleasant ones only.

We both know that these people are not carrying out their own political agenda. They are carrying out policy on behalf of the elected council. However, if you have evidence of a Labour Council dong the same thing in a similar manner, you can be sure that I will be the first to condemn that too.

So I want evidence of Labour Councils allowing £45 000 to be spent on one person each year for this form of care, and you want evidence of Labour Councils making similiar cuts – I suspect we need to find my evidence first, as the cuts wouldn’t be possible without it…

She is not getting money from the State, she is getting help to taken to the toilet.

Which is not provided by the tooth fairy (mind you, there’s a promissing Big Society option…). Everything the state does for anyone (can we drop the capitalisation of the state please – it is a concept, not a thing) is effectively transferring money, as money is what we use to measure the value of services and goods (note, not even Khemr Rouge Cambodia totally abolished money, it is that necessary); even the service of providing help to the toilet is in fact money from the state, as the state has to pay for it, or if it did not and Mrs McDonald wanted the same service, she would have to pay for it.

Tim j @ 56

And? That is not her problem. She is not responsible for the savage cuts that her council are imposing onto the budget (unless she voted Tory). She received a care plan and she wants that care plan honoured. How the council administer the care plan is up to them, but surely you cannot expect to withdraw a care plan, just because the political needs of a council change?

Why bother with any contract if one party are allowed to say, ‘oops sorry made a mistake and can we just pretend that contract was never signed’?

Would you support me, if I did that to a supplier? Or a client did that to me?

On the other hand, what about the proposal to enshrine a military convenient into law? Isn’t that taking rather foolhardy approach? We could be left with a bill for billions of quid if we get a serve military reversal. No doubt you would be happy for the Government of the day to tear this up in the faces of disabled squaddies, simply to switch resources to a programme deemed politically important?

She received a care plan and she wants that care plan honoured. How the council administer the care plan is up to them, but surely you cannot expect to withdraw a care plan, just because the political needs of a council change?

Read what you’ve just written for God’s sake. How the council administer the care plan is up to them. That’s what this entire case is about – were the council administering the care plan in a reasonable and proportionate way? Yes, they were. That’s been established in the Supreme Court.

Why bother with any contract if one party are allowed to say, ‘oops sorry made a mistake and can we just pretend that contract was never signed’?

What contract is supposed to be in play here? There is no contract. The Council are legally obliged to provide a standard of care to the disabled. They are meeting all of their legal obligations.

On the other hand, what about the proposal to enshrine a military convenient into law? Isn’t that taking rather foolhardy approach?

Yes, I think it’s a barking idea.

Watchman @ 57

I also suspect you either know very few Conservatives or have the misfortune to meet the unpleasant ones only.

Yes, it is the 90% that gives the rest of you a bad name. Still remarking on the political leanings of the case worker, or whoever should be off limits. The policy and budgets of the council are dictated by elected councillors and fair game.

Ms McDonald requires help to go to the toilet, let us get that clear, she wants the help, not the money to buy that help. I agree that the help has to be paid for, but let us keep to the facts. All she needs is help to go to the toilet as per outlined in her care plan. It is up to the council to decide how to pay for that, not Ms McDonald’s fault why they are unable to comply with this contract.

All she wants is the terms of her care plan honoured. The council want to rip that care plan up and rewrite a new one, not based on the needs of her care, but on the needs of the council.

That is a top down solution, where the council seeks to rip up a binding contract of sorts, merely because it feels that a disabled person has no right to expect to the right to have this contract honoured.

If I wasto take out a phone contract and half way through it, I just thought ‘fuck it, I cannot afford this’, the phone comany would be entitled to expect me to honour it, wouldn’t they?

No Tory will ever defend the right for people to tear up a contract simply because the person cannot be arsd o pay out anymore.

Tim j @ 59

What contract is supposed to be in play here? There is no contract. The Council are legally obliged to provide a standard of care to the disabled. They are meeting all of their legal obligations.

The standard of care to be provided is written in the care plan. By any reasonable standard that amounts to a contract. Had Ms McDonald’s condition changed to merit a new care plan, hat would have superceded the one in place.

That is a top down solution, where the council seeks to rip up a binding contract of sorts, merely because it feels that a disabled person has no right to expect to the right to have this contract honoured.

There is no sodding contract, nor anything equivalent to one.

By any reasonable standard that amounts to a contract.

No it doesn’t. Please stop trying to do legal analysis. It’s like watching a penguin tapdance.

Jim,

She received a care plan and she wants that care plan honoured.

In fact,

The explanation for the change in the description of the need is given by Thomas Brown who is the Service Manager in the respondent’s Adult Social Care Department. He says at paragraph 8 of his first witness statement that the respondent made it clear to Ms McDonald from January 2007 that there would be no funding for night care. But it agreed to provide such funding on a short-term basis pending her application to the Independent Living Fund (“ILF”) for financial support on the basis that this would be refunded by the ILF to the respondent if her application was successful. Mr Brown says that this was a concession on the part of the respondent. It is not clear from the evidence whether Ms McDonald made this application and, if so, with what result.

How the council administer the care plan is up to them, but surely you cannot expect to withdraw a care plan, just because the political needs of a council change?

Why bother with any contract if one party are allowed to say, ‘oops sorry made a mistake and can we just pretend that contract was never signed’?

That’s really weak.

Re-negotiations go on all the the time. Circumstances change and it would be ludicrous to not look again at the options. Suppose by some miracle Miss McDonald was totally cured? You would presumably insist the council continue to offer her care she had no need for, because that is the contract.

“I can no longer afford to repay the loan at £100 a month, can I reduce it to £80 over a longer period?” “Call it £90 and you have a deal.” “How about £85?” “OK.”

I could phone up my mobile phone provider and say, “I’m on this package for £30. Your rival has offered me a £20 month package that includes this and that”. The provider will say, “we can’t go as low as £20 but how about £25 for all of that plus a better new phone?”

In my business a customer will say, “We haven’t sold as many of your widgets as expected. We want to return the overstock for a refund.” We’ll say, “We’d really rather not.” They’ll say, “We have 50% market share. If you flatly refuse, we won’t buy any of your widgets in the future.” We’ll say, “OK let’s talk.”

Changing circumstances require people to review the situation.

Your point is not only weak but irrelevant. Miss McDonald was offered “funding on a short-term basis pending her application to the Independent Living Fund (“ILF”) for financial support on the basis that this would be refunded by the ILF to the respondent if her application was successful.” A temporary ‘contract’, in other words, which ran out.

“It is not in dispute that it is open to a local authority to reassess a person’s needs in a Care Plan Review” – of course that must be the case.

“Provided that it does not act in a Wednesbury unreasonable way or in breach of a person’s rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, it is open to an authority to make a reassessment in circumstances including that (i) there has been a change in the eligibility criteria for the assessment of needs; (ii) there have been relevant medical or technological developments which justify a change and (iii) the authority has simply had further thoughts and changed its mind as to what is the proper assessment of the need.” – how could it rationally be otherwise?

UKL @ 64

However, in any of those circumstances, the contract holder can just say ‘Actually we will hold you to that contract’ and hat is the end of it. The mobile phone provider can take you to court. An option not open to most people any more thanks to the Tory vermin closing legal aid to those type of cases.

The vermin have allowed their councils to rip up legally binding documents (NOT contracts, according to Tim J) in the faces of the disabled and expect them to shit their beds and have closed of any legal redress in the process.

Yes, that squares exactly with Cameron’s speech this week.

Jim,

The vermin have allowed their councils to rip up legally binding documents (NOT contracts, according to Tim J) …

IIUC, Needs Assessments and Care Plan Reviews are not contracts or ‘legally binding’ in that sense.

Perhaps worth pointing out that Miss McDonald didn’t use your current line of argument in court.

@ukliberty #66:

Perhaps worth pointing out that Miss McDonald didn’t use your current line of argument in court.

I think there might be a good reason for that…

Carl Garnder’s comment on this ends with:

Judges can if they wish heroically order a particular form of care for people in real need, leaving local authorities and social workers with the awkward, unglamorous job of deciding who else to say no to instead. But if they do, local government and social work soon become merely administrative exercises in implementing the not necessarily very consistent diktats of Whitehall and the courts. If we want any hope of reviving local government, and if we want professional experts rather than judges to make difficult individual decisions in complex areas, we should certainly not go that way.

http://www.headoflegal.com/2011/07/07/supreme-court-judgment-r-macdonald-v-kensington-chelsea/

…which seems to me to be a not unreasonable position.

UKL @ 66

My understanding is that there are circumstances and aspects of care plans that are legally binding. That is the point, though. The Government have withdrawn the right of people to get legal aid to take councils or other arms of the state to court, if and when legally binding orders are breached.

Jim,

I think you’re confusing care plans (mutually agreed where possible, but not binding – and not as far as I know signed) and responsibilities held by authorities under law.

Another minor point you might want to consider is that I don’t think it is allowable to goverment authorities to contract to provide services they have a statutory obligation to provide anyway – apart from anything else, there is no need for contract in this situation.

And finally, you are still assuming there is a right to take taxpayers’ money with accountability – you are just arguing this realtionship is contracted. But the state has no responsibility other than providing care in the way it sees best – the state has never legislated to allow care plans to become contractual, because that would in effect both limit the state and limit individual freedom (neither party could change the contract without consent – only end it), which would be stupid.

My understanding is that there are circumstances and aspects of care plans that are legally binding.

Councils have legal obligations to provide certain standards of care to the disabled. Provided the care plans in place meet those standards, then they are legally compliant. That was one of the points raised in this particular case. Can I suggest that you read the damn judgement?

Jim,

Yes, it is the 90% that gives the rest of you a bad name. Still remarking on the political leanings of the case worker, or whoever should be off limits. The policy and budgets of the council are dictated by elected councillors and fair game.

Putting aside the stupidity of either calling me a Tory (or a Conservative), I would suggest that whilst there are a few idiots around (as with any party), most Conservatives are no better or worse than anyone else – although they may generally have minimal patience with state interference I suppose.

Be that as it may, you’ll note that my point was not that this was done by a Labour voter (odds on it was not, even in social work I suspect) but that it was an operational decision, taken by an officer who has a budget and a number of people needing support, and has to bring the two together most effectively. The Council may have set the budget, but I see no reason to suggest that they ordered this particular cut – nor do I see any reason to criticise whichever council officer took the decision really. Yes, the council take responsibility and must have agreed the cut before it went up to high court judgement, but I am not going to accept that the council itself made the original decision – which kind of undermines your point that this was a typical tory decision, since it was almost certainly made operationally by officers in a Conservative Council, in a context where no budget cuts have been shown, under a Labour Government. It was a non-political decision.

If you wait a while, I’m sure plenty of political ones will come through – after all, people have been making cuts…

There is anotherb point – I suggested that cuts will cost more in the long term than they save. What happens if Ms Macdonald decides she can’t continue to live independently? The cost of her care will explode as she goes into a residential care home.

I have a suggestion for the cost conscious Tories. Restrict night care to those in residential homes as well. It is far cheaper to have a domiciliary worker to wipe up the mess in the morning – and you can do this to industrial levels in care home settings!

I have a suggestion for the cost conscious Tories. Restrict night care to those in residential homes as well. It is far cheaper to have a domiciliary worker to wipe up the mess in the morning – and you can do this to industrial levels in care home settings!

Any other stupid suggestions – night-time care in residential homes is about a lot more than toilet duties you know. Incidentally, you may have missed the irony tabs…

What happens if Ms Macdonald decides she can’t continue to live independently?

Then she could go into assisted housing I guess. As was explictly suggested by the Council as one of the possible solutions to this problem. Sheesh, it’s like people just can’t read or something.

Uh oh. Html fail.

@ 49 Jim

“I accused you of taking the side of people who go out of their way to attack the sick.”

No, you accused me of being on the side of people who are happy for people to be left to lie in their own shit. There’s a subtle difference. But I’m not on the side of people who want to attack the disabled either*.

*Remembering a rather tortuous previous conversation with you, the above statement means I disagree with them on disability. I might agree with them on different issues, which a sufficiently desperate person might claim meant I was “on their side”.

“Have you or have you not joined this thread to take the side of those who want to remove a service to the disabled?”

I’ve joined it to take the middle road – she should get a decent range of options, but we shouldn’t automatically be able to demand that the government gives us the most expensive option possible when cheaper, acceptable options exist.

Whilst we’re on the subject of costs..what’s it likely to cost to treat the inevitable pressure ulcers and subsequent infections from soiled sores that this lady is likely to suffer as a result of lying in her own shit all night?

And we see someone else who hasn’t read the report, or most of the comments…

Watchman @ 72

I have found from personal experience both on and off line that the most despicable people in any debate are normally those who support or have great sympathy with the Tory Party. I do not mean people I merely disagree with on a point of ideology, but people whose views I find really offensive. I am often told that these people are in a minority, but the vast majority of Tories never condemn these people.