1. In April 2019, and currently, Friendship Care and Housing Limited (‘FCH’), who provide care at Pheonix House, and the Solihull Care Housing Association Limited (‘SCHA’), are reliant upon information from the applicant and their family when assessing the suitability of a privately funded applicant to become a resident.
2. Due to their changing circumstances and/or health, applicants and their families are not always well placed to be realistic about what the applicant’s needs and risks are. Therefore there is a risk that full and accurate information will not be provided to FCH and SCHA.
3. In this case, the family of Mrs. Hoare assert that they were not made aware by Mental Health Teams that she was not suitable for independent living and they genuinely thought that she was. For whatever reason, full information that was known to the applicant and family about Mrs. Hoare’s mental health history was not included on her application form or given in the assessment meeting held on the 5th April 2019. Specifically the assessors were not aware of Mrs. Hoare’s recent treatment under section 2 of the Mental Health Act, nor that she continued to be under the care of the Community Mental Health team (‘CMHT’), nor were staff informed on the 5th April 2019 that she was resident in a care home at the time of the meeting.
4. Phoenix House and other settings where FCH provide care do not routinely ask for information from applicant’s General Practitioners to obtain independent current medical information. It was discussed at inquest that there are various proportionate ways this information could be sought with the consent of the applicant.
5. At assessment a full service users’ assessment was not completed for Mrs. Hoare by the FCH assessor which would have been an opportunity to ask more searching questions of the applicant and her family.
6. As a consequence of the above, Mrs. Hoare became a resident of Phoenix House when she was not suitable. If information regarding her recent mental health history, ongoing management and care home residency had come to light before Mrs. Hoare became a resident it would not necessarily have prevented her being offered a unit at Phoenix House but it would have resulted in enquiries with the CMHT, her GP and potentially the care home she was in at the time of assessment. It was my conclusion that on a balance of probabilities with adequate investigations before taking up residence, it would have been determined that Mrs. Hoare could not be accommodated at that time in an independent living setting.
7. Once Mrs. Hoare was a resident, a care plan and risk assessments were not completed.
8. At inquest, evidence was given that improvements have already been made by FCH and SCHA to illicit more information from initial application forms but whilst consideration is being given to seeking information from an applicant’s GP for all privately funded applicants, a decision has not yet been made. Further whilst instruction has been given to the staff members involved in this case on the importance of completing full assessments prior to and post admission, no formal training or written admission process for staff carrying out assessment across all of FCH’s supported living services has been introduced.
9. Therefore it continues to be a concern that applicants may be accepted to FCH supported living settings who have not been fully assessed and who are not suitable, putting their lives at risk.