Advice

Mihangel

Hi,
I dont know if anyone can help or give me some advice.

My Great Grandma is 102 and at the moment is living in her own home but has local council carers coming in 3 times a day. Unfortunatly I have seen a decline in her health and i have estimated her living in her own house for a maximum of 7 months, before she has to go into a home.

Can anyone advise how we (the family) can avoid having to sell the house to pay for the caring fees. It seems a shame to lose the family asset after years of caring and obiding by the great grandmas wish to live in her own home.

The house would need to be split 3 ways (great grandma's 3 children)

thanks for any help

mike

chesky369

It's not really the family's asset, is it? It's your great grandma's and if you should be grateful that she has this asset which she can cash in to get a very much better standard of care than if she had nothing. If you tried to get around it by selling the house beforehand, or anything similar, it would be seen as deprivation of assets, which would be seen as fraud.

Mihangel

Robert2009 wrote: »

I think that what you are posting is terrible.

I hope that when I am old and decrepit and need to go into a home that my children will sell my house so that I can live in luxury in the old folks home.

And have you not thought that taking a 102 year old person from the comfort of her home and sticking her in a old folks home that will have the minimum of comforts because you are too miserable to pay for them might not be the final straw that finishes her off.

Maybe that is the idea.

Rob

thanks for the advice i didn't realise it waould be classed as fraud so wouldn't be proposing doing that.

Of course i dont want to finish her off she is family, my other great grand parent was put in an expensive home 8 years ago and cost her a 200k home.

The treatment she was given was awful, being dressed in other peoples clothes, poor quality food and just not treated like a human being. So i dont think paying over the odds gets you a better type of care home (or thats my familys experience).

chesky369

I wouldn't bank on it until you've seen both types.

monkeyspanner

Your grandmother would need to finance her own care because she owns a property. At 102 she could probably get a really good deal on an immediate care needs annuity. Essentially she would need to use capital to purchase an annuity which would pay a regular income until she died.

missile

I would suggest you visit your local care homes to see which (if any) are satisfactory. Another alternative, might be to use some of the house value fund full time live in carer(s).

pollypenny

Your grandmother has reached a grand old age and ,sadly, she is not likely to live much longer*.

If you sell the house and buy her a place in the very best home you can find, you'll still be likely to have a good sum left for the family to inherit. If not, she'll have spent her last years in as much comfort as her own resources could provide.

* Sorry if that sounds heartless - it's not meant to, am thinking of statistics.

littlemissbossy

I can sympatise with this, the people who save and have their own home usually end up funding their own care when others that haven't get funded by the local authority.

My husband and I had to find a nursing home for my MIL and FIL and you do worry that they will be looked after properly. Thankfully we found a really nice place that treats them very well. Its seriously expensive and at first it shocked us how quickly their savings (from their house sale) disappeared. This is something you do get used to though and its far more important to my hubby and I that they are safe and looked after and of course not ringing us up in the middle of the night like they used to.

HTH

frannyann

Make sure she is screened for Continuing Health Care funding, if her health needs outweigh her social care needs then any placement would be fully funded by the NHS.

Mihangel

Make sure she is screened for Continuing Health Care funding, if her health needs outweigh her social care needs then any placement would be fully funded by the NHS.

can you explain more?

Savvy_Sue

I think this thread will tell you what you need to know.

Basically, health care is 'free at the point of delivery'. Someone who can no longer be cared for at home may have a number of health related needs, and if these health needs are sufficiently serious / numerous, then they should not have to pay for residential care.

However, some of the reasons why they need residential care may not be health-related, and local authorities will argue that some health needs are not health related IYSWIM, especially if the 'needs' are 'well-managed' - for example someone who needs daily injections, but it's all well under control. They're wrong on that one ...