A LANDMARK court case is set to cost Oxfordshire’s social care service thousands of pounds because of changes to how councils protect people in care.

Following a Supreme Court judgement, Oxfordshire County Council has seen a steep rise in the number of applications to “deprive someone in care of their liberty” – for instance keeping them in hospital or stopping them from seeing certain people.

This is because the so-called Chester West ruling has effectively lowered the threshold for what can be considered a “deprivation of liberty.”

And it has meant the number of people needing to be assessed has gone through the roof.

Extra cash now must be spent on overtime and staffing as the council tries to deal with the backlog, expected to run until February.

John Jackson, the director of adult social care at the county council, has estimated that the ruling will lead to the council spending almost 50 per cent more assessing these cases.

He said: “The numbers have increased six-fold in Oxfordshire, in comparison to the national estimate, which is a ten-fold increase.

“Oxfordshire currently has 30 cases termed ‘urgent authorisations’ which are outside of the 14-day deadline for completion, and is dealing with these as soon as capacity is available but it is of concern that we are not able to meet the statutory requirements.

“The deprivation of liberty safeguards team are currently granting between 12 and18 authorisations per week.

“This means on the current activity we will not clear the workload today until February 2015. Rules were introduced in 2009 to prevent people in care who might not be able to agree to their care arrangements from being “deprived of their liberty.”

These are people such as elderly people with dementia, people with learning disabilities and people with a brain injury.

In this context, these people can be “deprived of their liberty” to keep them from harm.

But following the ruling, the county council has already received 491 applications between April and August this year – compared to 232 between April 2013 and March 2014. It means that the county council will have to spend an extra £120,000 dealing with these cases which is being spent on training for staff, medical assessors and overtime.

Mr Jackson said this overspend would not impact the delivery of other services.

President of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, David Pearson, said: “This is not all about money.

“We also need to see urgent changes to the law which make sure that the system is clear for people to use and ensures that all people are treated the same throughout the safeguarding process, whether they are living in residential care homes, hospital settings or in the community.”

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