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Social care fraud

What is social care fraud?

Social Care fraud can include:

• the management of finances where the service user lacks the capacity, such as apointeeship, court of protection and other management of client's funds (e.g. in sheltered housing), which may link to other offences such as theft, false accounting, and fraud by abuse of position;
• falsely claiming or misusing Direct Payments / personal budgets, either by the service user or carer;
• social care fraud can also include carers, relatives, "friends" abusing clients receiving Council services e.g. theft of cash / belongings, pressure to spend money on them or alter their wills.

What are the costs involved in social care fraud?

From a survey of English Councils by the European Institute for Combating Corruption & Fraud, the amount of detected social care fraud in 2014/15 was £4.2m.

How does this impact on you?

For every penny that is defrauded from the Council (and the taxpayer), this reduces the level of available resources the Council has and therefore the level of services the Council can provide.

Social care fraud takes resources from Adult and Children's Social Services, impacting on the level of services available to vulnerable adults and children.

How to report your suspicions of social care fraud?

Fraud Hotline - 0800 953 0217

Report Online