Council help with 24 hour care

vigman

My 102 year old mother still lives at home. My two siblings and I have been helping her but she now needs 24 hour care. She doesn’t want to go into a home and sell her house. 

We are looking into 24 hour care. At the moment she has over the £23,000 savings cap for council help. 

If she was to have 24 hour care at say £1500 a week, (£6000 per month) then she would soon get to the £14k baseline for help. 

My questions are: will councils pay for 24 care at home and how do you arrange changing from the private payment to council payments please?
Finally, if she uses this year’s and last year’s tax allowance of family gifting ie 2 x £3000 would this be seen as deprivation of assets or a legal use of her savings.

TIA

Torry_Quine

From my knowledge the most the council will provide is four visits a day to cover meal times and getting back to bed. 

Albermarle

You would be better to post this question on the disabilities board as well , where there are probably more  people who understand care financing .

Disability money matters — MoneySavingExpert Forum

Keep_pedalling

LAs will fund a maximum of 4 visits a day, they will not fund full time home care. Unfortunately with her low level of savings a live in career is not going to be possible, unless she does something like equity release.

if the main reason she does not want to sell the house is because she want to leave her children an inheritance the best thing you can do for her is convince her that her care is more important than any inheritance.

missile

You could contract a live in carer 

Lastonestanding

vigman said:

My 102 year old mother.

We are looking into 24 hour care. At the moment she has over the £23,000 savings cap for council help. 

If she was to have 24 hour care at say £1500 a week, (£6000 per month) then she would soon get to the £14k baseline for help.

Finally, if she uses this year’s and last year’s tax allowance of family gifting ie 2 x £3000 would this be seen as deprivation of assets or a legal use of her savings.

Do social services asses her to need 24 hour care?
Does £3,000 x 2 take her below the £14k baseline for help, she will also have her person?
So it could take quite some time to get below £14k

DairyQueen

My late MiL also held the optimistic view that the taxpayer would fund 24hr home care. She had little cash but the house was worth a reasonable chunk.

She didn't want to enter residential care but there was no practical alternative. We were, however, able to find a very good care home be it with a waiting list. She approved the choice, waited 6 months for a place, and spent her final two years in safety and comfort.

Few people wish to enter a care home. Most would prefer to stay at home. Unfortunately, this requires the kind of capital that isn't available to the majority.

[Deleted User]

You don't say if your mother has health issues? If she does, then apply for an NHS Continuing Care assessment - because if she needs care for health reasons, rather than social or just old age - then she could be awarded NHS funded continuing care.
That care can be in the home and does not have to be in a nursing home. Obviously, her home would need to be suitable but there may also be adaptions to the home that could be made.
Any application for NHS funded continuing care will likely be long and drawn out so it is worth researching this. However, if she is entitled it can be done. I would suggest looking into it and definitely involving her GP.

otb666

My mother has Parkinson's and my father has mental illness  Both have to pay for their own care in nursing home and as over £1000 each per week their home has been sold so they can continue being in nursing home self funded