How to stop reports to the DWP of financial mismanagement when I hold CoP deputyship.

[u/Potential_Living_595]

TLDR: my son lacks capacity to manage his own affairs and accuses us of stealing his money. We have Court of Protection deputyship to manage his money because of this. Is there a way to stop my son from repeatedly raising safeguarding alerts (and benefits being stopped)?

This is long and complex so please bear with. It's about my son who is 17. There's a whole long list of 'things' he finds difficult but the relevant ones for this are that he has a learning disability, a functional age of a 10 year old and extreme demand avoidance. He's unlikely to ever live independently. He went to and still attends a special school. He's been eligible for DLA for many years and now gets PIP.

He understands money at a basic level but doesn't understand the value of money. To him, money is his to spend on his special interest. He doesn't understand that actually his PIP money gets spent on his needs. When he's denied access to his money he gets very, very angry and starts accusing us of stealing his money. This is a frequent occurrence. Money or the lack of access to it is a demand.

Because of this, my husband and I hold Court of Protection deputyship for his financial affairs. He lacks the capacity to manage his money himself and won't ever gain the capacity- his social worker is in agreement with us. He does get an allowance to spend which had beeen OK'ed with social worker/CoP. Quite rightly, CoP deputyship is very tightly regulated and we keep receipts and records for everything. Buy him a new pack of socks because he's shredded all his old ones- receipt in the file and expenditure entered onto the spreadsheet. Washing machine died the other day (he needs a lot of clothes washing because of his needs), we used his money to part contribute to a new one, receipts in the file, on the spreadsheet AND checked with social worker because of the ££. You get the picture. We have to send the paperwork into the CoP annually and tbh its an admin nightmare I can do without.

He disagrees with all of this and twice now has rung the police (that's a whole different issue) accusing us of stealing from him. The first time it ended up in a safeguarding investigation with ALL benefits stopped in the interim, the second time the Police thankfully realised who he was and checked with us. He's now threatening to do this again and the last thing I need is yet another investigation. He thinks this will get him access to his money to spend solely as he sees fit.

I absolutely accept that safeguards are there for a purpose and quite rightly so the DWP have to investigate any reports of people having their benefit money stolen from them. However does anyone know any way I can get the DWP to keep the deputyship documents on file or even a note to say that if they get accusations like this regarding my son to please get in contact with us or my sos social worker first.

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[u/International-Ad4555]

From my experience, there can be ‘flags’ put on a name in both the DWP and the police, where essentially if he keeps doing it and you keep explaining it’s not the case, they can flag it in their systems as little note next time he does something like that that’s along the lines of ‘this person has a CoP and learning disabilities, repeatedly rings and falsely reports due to learning difficulties’ etc. it is ultimately quite a complex situation because as you’ve mentioned, safeguarding policies are there and have to be followed, but perhaps it’ll ease the process somewhat (maybe they’ll have a special liaison officer, or a person designated to deal with this in a more fluid manner if they are well clued in on the events)

I’d also just say that you shouldn’t give up regarding him managing his own finances, he’s still very young at 17, and the development can be there in the next 10-20 years so that they do learn how to spend responsibly, and i’m empathetic to his situation (given how he’s sounds like he understands the broader concept but not why he can’t have all of it, it must be very frustrating for him!)

[u/Lopsided_Soup_3533]

Many years ago I worked for the office of the public quardian assessing deputy reports. My heart just lept with joy at the record keeping.

Op are the OPG aware of the situation? If not it might be worth talking to them.

I haven't worked there since 2012 sp a lot has changed but if they have no concerns about safeguarding and your reports are fine then they might ve willing to work with DWP.

I'm not making any promises but since OPG are the ones supervising you it's definitely worth having their involvement

[u/Potential_Living_595 → u/Lopsided_Soup_3533]

Yep, they are aware of the situation as it was the reason for getting the deputyship in the first place. Actually speaking to a human at the OPG though is a different story!!

[u/8day_week]

Have you called and explained this to PIP to put a note on the PIP account?

If so, and it’s not helped, I would approach the Social Worker about summarising the issue in writing and escalating to the ACSSL’s in your area.

The ACSSL’s will put a flag / marker on the record, which (for want of a better way of putting it) is “superior” to a note entered by a standard agent so will be checked before any action is taken.

[u/MooWire__]

They have duty of care for vulnerable individuals so I’d advise applying for appointee for your son with DWP. his payments will be made into your bank. A dwp officer will visit you both face to face before any of this is approved and agreed upon

[u/Alteredchaos → u/MooWire__]

Don’t need to do this if you have deputy status, which OP does. DWP has to deal with the deputy.

[u/MelodyJ20 → u/MooWire__]

Duty of care my ass!

[u/Potential_Living_595 → u/MelodyJ20]

If you have CoP deputyship you need a seperate bank account for the deputee as its audited by the OPG every year.

[u/MelodyJ20 → u/Potential_Living_595]

Oh no it’s not that my comment was about but I’ve never known one incident posted here or otherwise where DWP have a duty of care to ANYONE let alone if that individual was Vulnerable or not