We have written about ‘winnings for care’ in the past whereby part of your compensation covers for care. But what exactly does this entail? We realise this is a bit of a broad statement so we wanted to write more about terminology of care within the medical negligence sector. Remember, if you need the help of persistent medical negligence solicitors in Manchester you can call our number to be put through to excellent local lawyers.
A lot of the time, part of a compensation reward will include the following kinds of compensation:
Domestic tasks
Care assisting with household tasks like cooking, cleaning, taking out rubbish, food shopping fall under the household tasks.
Personal care
You will receive personal care if you need assistance dressing yourself, going to the toilet, getting to work or social/leisure activities, taking medicine, general bodily care like cutting finger nails and other tasks that are critical but unable to be taken care of – like paying bills and council tax.
Vehicle tasks
If you require your car to be cleaned, maintained or repaired. Critically, you will have needed to be able to do this before the accident and injury occurred.
Property tasks
This involves needing help with anything to do with maintaining your home. Examples could include things like fixing the door or gate of your home, cleaning windows, cleaning calls, light bulbs and other general repairs required for a home to operate.
Do you require any of this assistance? If you have been involved in an accident we might be able to assist you in arranging care.
Which types of care do you actually claim for?
These are the kinds of care that your claim could afford you.
A paid worker
This is where someone would be paid for their services. For example, an hourly rate to look after your personal tasks, or prune a tree back, or perhaps clean your property. Let’s say a nurse negligently harms you, leaving you with severe tooth ache, you might require an assistant to help you with taking your kids to school. A paid worker could do this for you.
You can only get paid care if you have had an accident and the damages caused require you to have care to function. You could also be entitled to increase the amount of care you already receive. Future care needs can also be accounted for when deciding how much compensation someone is owed.
If you require care between the time of the accident through to the time that compensation is being decided, you might be reimbursed for any paid care that you have had to pay for yourself. In fact, if you win the case and it is proven that the other side acted negligently or somehow caused your harm, it is very likely that every penny spent on care will be covered within the damages. This is why it is important to record all your dealings with a company that you pay for care. Keep receipts any other documents so that you can be fully compensated for any expenses incurred.
Gratuitous care
Gratuitous care usually comes with no cost. Usually this would be carried out by a friend or family member. In some cases this can be subsidised so you can get care from someone you know and trust and they can be paid for some of their time.
There are certain timeframes that you have to commit to in order to receive funding for gratuitous care. Sometimes you can be paid back for the time you have put in before the case has been finalised. These are all the kinds of things we will let you know of if you approach us to make a claim. If you are engaging in gratuitous care now – make sure to record every hour you have put in so there are records of what you have done.
We don’t just mean “4 hours on Monday” – we mean specific things like: “We drove [injured person] to the hospital on Saturday and waited there with him for 2 hours. Then, we drove him back for the second trip of the day at 1.5 hours. We then dressed [injured person] and fed him which took an hour.” And so on. A more detailed and realistic representation of what happened will make it far easier to compensate you.
If you are afforded a gratuitous care refund, you would normally be paid at the average rate of a carer. Or whatever task you were taking care of. Again, you can be paid for the expected cost of future care too so you are covered for that.