The Audit Commission said on Wednesday that it has found a number of administrative issues with a government voucher scheme for elderly people to pay for care homes, such as incorrect charges and widely varying application processing times. In a report, the commission said more than 5,700 applications for the Residential Care Service Voucher scheme were received in 2022-23 and 2023-24, and as of the end of March this year, 3,179 vouchers had been issued. Welfare officials haven't given a timeline on how long applications should take, but the auditor found it can vary greatly, from issuance the same day all the way to a wait of seven months. The average time was 43 days, it said. The auditor also found that some voucher recipients were wrongly sent bills for charges that were supposed to be covered by the government, or were overcharged by homes for extra items like nutritional drinks. The Social Welfare Department is tasked with inspecting service providers, as well as carrying out visits to check various aspects of the voucher scheme, such as the fees being charged. But the auditor found that in the previous three financial years, inspections were carried out 41 days late on average, while visits were 232 days overdue. The department blamed the delays on the Covid pandemic. "[The social welfare director should] take measures to ensure that service monitoring visits and inspections are conducted in accordance with the timeframes stipulated in the department's guidelines," the commission said. It also made a series of other recommendations, such a specific timeframe for processing voucher applications and a mechanism for vetting care home charges. The department said it agreed with the recommendations and will take the necessary follow-up action.
