CQC response to Which? Investigation

The response to the Which? article from head of the Care Quality Commission Dame Jo Williams concludes:

"Care professionals and managers in health and social care are closest to those who use services and have a duty to take steps to stop or report poor care whenever they see it."

It makes you wonder what the point of having a Care Quality Commission is if they think that it's up to the people who work in homes to monitor quality.  What happens if a home is managed by people who are more interested in profit than in the quality of care?

The full response is here

http://www.cqc.org.uk/newsandevents/newsstories/jowilliamsrespondstowhichreport.cfm

Which? Undercover Investigation

Which? has carried out an undercover investigation of care homes by sending actors into four UK homes.

What they found in one home has resulted in the CQC suspending admissions and launching an investigation.

The full article is here

http://www.which.co.uk/campaigns/food-and-health/care-homes-investigation/which-care-homes-investigation/

HMRC and Power of Attorney

I look after my mother's financial affairs under Lasting Power of Attorney.  We filed a tax return for her by post at the end of October 2010.  In March 2011 we received a letter from HMRC saying that we were being fined as we had failed to file a return.

We checked bank records and found that the cheque that had been sent with the return had been cashed by HMRC at the beginning of November.

A week after the letter about the fine arrived we received the original tax return back from HMRC.  They had rejected it as I had signed it and they had no record of my Lasting Power of Attorney.  Unfortunately HMRC had incorrectly addressed this letter, by missing out the house number, and it had taken 5 months to arrive.

I have now sent Lasting Power of Attorney document by registered post, asked HMRC to correct their address record and appealed the fine.

We filed by post originally as we didn't have a UTR number to file online.  Presumably if we had been able to file online we wouldn't have needed to register Power of Attorney with HMRC as no signature is required.