State Trustees client paying higher fees than he should be

Summary

Gus lives in a nursing home and is a State Trustees client. He was paying a much higher fee to stay in aged care than he should have been. Yet State Trustees did nothing to fix this, for at least one year.

When we raised this with State Trustees, they arranged for Gus to be reimbursed.

What was the case?

Gus is in his 70s and has no family in Australia. The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal appointed State Trustees to manage his affairs.

A State Trustees consultant visited Gus at his nursing home in July 2017. The consultant noted Gus's Centrelink-assessed daily fee appeared to be too high. He had been paying about $20 per day.

Our enquiries

We summonsed Gus's file from State Trustees in late 2018. We did this as part of an investigation into State Trustees.

We saw the note made by the consultant in 2017. There was nothing in the file to show what State Trustees had done to investigate or fix the problem.

We asked State Trustees what they had done. They said 'we did not pursue this and update Centrelink at the time, which appears to have due to an oversight'.

Outcome

Gus should have been paying only 51 cents per day, not almost $20. State Trustees arranged for Gus to be reimbursed.