Ed Mitchell provides an update on community care law
Increasingly, local authorities are having to take hard decisions about how they deploy the limited resources available to them for the provision of community care services. In R (McDonald) v Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea [2011] UKSC 33, [2011] 4 All ER 881 the Supreme Court confirmed that it is principally for a local authority to take these hard decisions in individual cases, not the courts. So, once a local authority had formally reassessed community care needs, it was entitled to decide to save some £250 per week by supplying continence aids rather than funding a night-time carer.
McDonald
The case concerned a 67-year-old woman left unable to mobilise unaided by a stroke. While she needed to urinate about three times per night, she was not incontinent. There were two options for managing the claimant’s night-time continence needs. The first, favoured by the claimant, was for a night-time carer to help her to a commode. The second cheaper option, which the claimant’s local authority preferred, was to use continence pads or special
