In 2017 the Independent Living Strategy Group - an informal grouping of disability organisations and activists, chaired by Baroness Jane Campbell - put out a request for examples of where people had tried to challenge how their local authority was implementing the Care Act.
The most common experience we were told about was where people challenged the amount they were being charged for community care (which could also take the form of a charge against their direct payment).
This is a long-standing and much contentious issue. We are talking here, not about residential care but about the support people need to carry on living in their own homes. Local authorities do not have to charge for community care but, as their budgets have been progressively cut back, they have increasingly been opting to use their discretionary powers to charge. Nevertheless, there remains a great deal of inconsistency across the country as to how much they raise in charges - ranging from 4% of the total spent on adult social care by one local authority through to 46%.