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Removing appointee
My clients are a young woman with a learning disability and her non-disabled partner. She has moved away from her mum after they fell out, and now lives with him, but mum is still acting as her appointee for benefits and apparently refuses to give this up voluntarily, so they have been unable to get a joint claim up and running. My client has said she is capable of managing her own affairs; I am not qualified to assess this. Partner says she can handle her own affairs and does not want to be an appointee for her. She is pregnant with baby due mid August.
Until now partner was getting JSA as a single person and has reported the change of circumstances, his next payment would have been due today but hasn’t been paid. Mum lives the other side of the country, and if she is claiming for her daughter she isn’t passing the money on and it is unclear what is hapening to it, althugh my client is not certain what benefits, if any, she gets. I think long term they may need to look at making an ESA claim rather than joint claim JSA but the immediate issue is getting mum off the books so they can get some money paid to them as a couple.
I have assited her to write to DWP to say she no longer wants her mum to be an appointee, but without supporting evidence of her capability I am not certain how effective this will be. Is there anything else that can be done? I don’t think she even has a local GP yet as she has only just moved to the area.
AFAIK appointees differ from people with a power of attorney in a couple of ways. Firstly they act as well as the claimant, not instead of, secondly they don’t have the same duties as someone with a POA.
Having an appointee doesn’t meant that the claimant lacks capacity, as a POA often does, so she should be able to decide for herself and the DWP should folow her instructions.
The appointment under reg 33 of the Claims and Payment Regs can be revoked at any time by the SoS so perhaps if evidence of capability and an explanation of the facts was sent to a decision maker at the appropriate BDC this might happen. There must be lots of appointees who abuse their position and so there must be a procedure for sacking them.
The link below should take you to the DWP guidance on the procedure for removing an appointee
Thanks Pete, I did have a look at that already. My concern is that, from my impressions of her, I am not totally convinced she actually could manage her own affairs - her keyworker at the hostel where she lives is of the same opinion. So it’s not clear that the interview will get the desired outcome and it seems likely that mum will contest any attempts to remove her as the appointee.
I have a feeling we may have to go down the route of arguing that mum is not acting in her best interests.
Was just wondering if anyone had experience of the process, as it is not a situation I have dealt with before.
Ask Social Services to do a best interests test under section 4 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
Ask Social Services to do a best interests test under section 4 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
Financial abuse can also come under the ‘safeguarding’ rules and Local Authorities have a procedure in place to look at potential issues of financial (and all other) abuses.