When nursing care is provided in a social care context, who foots the bill? Nicholas Dobson looks at the Supreme Court case of Forge Care Homes
- In the context of social care, nursing care by an NHS nurse covers care which in all the circumstances ought to be provided by a registered nurse because it is ‘ancillary to or closely connected with or part and parcel of the nursing care which she has to provide’.
We know that NHS services are generally free at the point of delivery. Social care, on the other hand, is local authority-funded and subject to client means-testing. But what if nursing care is provided in a predominantly social care context? Who pays and for what? It was this scenario that the Supreme Court had to tackle on 2 August 2017 in R (Forge Care Homes Ltd and others) v Cardiff and Vale University Health Board and others [2017] UKSC 56. Lady Hale gave the only substantive judgment, with which Lords Clake, Wilson, Carnwath and Hodge agreed.
Background
As Lady Hale indicated, the ‘case is about
