Sir,

Re. Charging for domiciliary home care, April 1.

Further to the excellent letter from Hazel Cook published in the last issue of your 'paper, I would like to make the following points. The Welsh Assembly recently announced that it intended to abolish all domiciliary home care charges. Now all users of the Pembrokeshire County Council social services have received a communication stating that as from April 1, 2004, they 'aim to develop charges that reflect the customer's needs and their ability to pay'. They have asked for detailed information on income and capital and, refusal to provide these details will result in a notional charge of £100 per week.

My husband suffered a severe brain stem stroke in 1997 at the age of 57. He is completely paralysed, unable to talk or swallow and has been assessed as requiring 35 hours per week assistance. Our present charge for this is £24 per week. If we choose not to provide the information requested, this will result in a 400 per cent increase. We have already had to pay a considerable amount of money towards a disabled facilities grant to adapt our house to enable my husband to remain in his own home. Naturally this took most of our capital. Now we are being assessed as to our disposable income!

The council have asked us to provide these details with no guidelines as to how the assessment will be made. Will it disregard benefit payments? Will it disregard disability related expenses (i.e. the maintenance and upkeep of lifts, hoists etc. which are considerable and for which we are liable)? Will we be left with enough income to maintain a reasonable standard of living (not just above the poverty line)?

Life has already dealt us a severe blow and we are now to be penalised financially for daring to require assistance through no fault of our own! Someone once said that a civilisation should be judged by how it looks after its' least able members. If this is true, Pembrokeshire County Council needs to seriously look at its policy towards disabled people.

Mrs. B. E. Warden,

4 Bevelin Hall,