Cost of care for the elderly

MobileSaver

Exodi said:

councils are on their knees and something has to give.

As you say, something has to give.

One approach is to reduce the cost of care and so perhaps allowing dormitory-style bedrooms instead of everyone getting a private room is a way of making limited funds go further? (A knock-on benefit being it would disincentivise many people from deliberately disposing of assets...)

AskAsk

Exodi said:

Pollycat said:

Exodi said:

Pollycat said:

AskAsk said:

Pollycat said:

AskAsk said:

Pollycat said:

AskAsk said:

Lindagreenacre said:

Think that I need to go on expensive holidays.  

lol, exactly this!  people spends thousands on expensive cruises when they retire.  time to see the world and enjoy the money they have worked for and saved up all their working life.  then, some years down the line, they need care and if only they had not gone on those expensive holidays and blew all that money.  so now, the rest of us have to pay for this......  things need to change as the rest of us can't afford to pay for care for the elderly any more as it is becoming a crisis with people living longer and so inevitably ending up in care.

So what do you suggest?
That people who have worked all their lives (as I and my husband have) are not allowed to go on holidays in case they need the money to pay for their care that may or may not be required?

Not everyone will end up going into a care home.

with people living longer, care is inevitable.  you may not go into a care home but you may need care visits at home, which is also funded by the council.

at the moment there is no requirement for people to save towards old age, and i think it is about time that people are forced to do so.  it is not possible to expect younger people to continue to pay the bills for the elderly because they have spent all their money on holidays or gifted it to their children and grandchildren.

I have said before, there needs to be a compulsory plan, like the personal pension, where everyone needs to contribute and that can used later on for care needs.  if you don't need to use the pot, you can use it for funeral expense or your relation can inherit it.  At the moment, the public purse pays for everything, and people do not have to contribute if their savings or income are below a certain threshold at the time.  They may have used up a lot of money by that time, that they wouldn't otherwise have done if they thought they needed to save for care.

I am posting purely from my own situation.
Having had a reasonably well paid job (in IT), I've paid a load of NI contributions over my working life.
I've not taken any benefits out, not even child benefit.
My council tax has gone towards funding for schools - which I've not benefited from.
I have a private pension together with my state pension.
That funds my lifestyle, which includes several holidays each year.
I've saved for my retirement - so I've saved for my old age even though there was/is no requirement to do so.
Nobody forced me to do it.

There is no certainty that I will need care at home. If there is, I will be able to fund it myself.

I have no children or grandchildren to gift my money to.

The'public purse' pays nothing for me.

You're banging the drum at the wrong person.

when i reply to your comments, i am not aiming the comments at you but the population as a general concept.  in the past people didn't live as long and so the majority of people did not need to go into a care home before they passed away.  the population is living longer and we aren't designed to live this long, so although we are still alive, our bodies and brains have often shut down and we are living on borrowed time with care and medical advance.

as more and more people fall into this category, social care is going to become unaffordable to the nation as a whole as it is the young people that will need to pay more taxes to fund these social care.  council tax includes a large proportion for social care.  I just don't think this funding model is going to be possible for much longer and soon the government will look into ways of getting people to fund more for themselves.

this may be why they will start to be stricter with people giving away assets before they retire and changing the rules on gifts.

I would object to being told I must save towards potential care home fees.

I hope any government will come up with a better scheme than that.

It's clear you disagree with @AskAsk, but do you have a better suggestion?

I'd hope you can accept that the current situation of pensioners 'gifting' everything they own to their kids or racing through their savings as quickly as possible, so that they don't have a penny to their names at the point they might need care is not tenable.

No, I don't have a better suggestion.
I prefer not to put forward a suggestion at all than propose a crackpot suggestion that you yourself call "not practical, reasonable or agreeable to anyone".

You've misquoted what I said:

Exodi said:

Either we prevent people spending their own money (which is not practical, reasonable or agreeable to anyone), we allocate an individual pot of money towards it that people have no choice over, allocate a public pot via increased taxation, tighten DoA checks, or ???

So of the options I mentioned (but formatted better) were:

1. Prevent people from being able to spend large chunks of their own money (effectively preventing people from 'gifting' any significant amount of money to children or going on multiple expensive cruises) - this is not what AskAsk suggested or was being discussed and what I said would not be practical, reasonable or agreeable to anyone. I included it for completeness.

2. Have people contribute to an individual pot, much like how a private pension works - which is what AskAsk suggested with rules about how discretionary it could be (because clearly a lot of people would prefer to opt out to give the money to their children, and have the taxpayer foot the bill for their care as happens currently).

3. Have people contribute to a national pot, much like how the state pension works - which isn't popular, as we saw with Boris Johnson toying with this idea including a sloppy implementation where originally young people were expected to pay for pensioners care through increased NI, but pensioners would not. I think after a cumulative 19.5% increase to the state pension over the past 2 years, workers are less sympathetic to pensioners at the moment. Yes some pensioners are poor, but more are not.

4. Tightening DoA checks I think most of us could get behind, but I've no idea how much can be achieved here. This might be one of those ideas that sounds good on paper but doesn't achieve much more in practice.

5. Any other ideas people had.

Pollycat said:

Of course I think it wrong to gift money to avoid care home fees.
I've said so on many similar threads.

It does appear we're all on the same page though, I'm personally getting quite fatigued by seeing the same threads week in week out trying to circumvent DoA restrictions and force the taxpayer to fund their parents care so they can realise the maximum inheritance possible. No shame in these threads as people perform the mental gymnastics required to convince themselves that it is somehow not fair to pay for your own care, because [people on benefits], [foreigners], etc.

If everyone with the original means were to pay for their own care, I_Love_comps mum wouldn't need to be paying over £8k per month. I understand we are in this endless feedback loop where 'costs are high because people avoid paying for their own care' and 'people avoid paying for their own care because costs are high' but councils are on their knees and something has to give.

the problem with increasing taxation to help with care is not specific enough as each council has responsibility for their residents and each council will have their own policy on funding so mass tax increase will not be fair.  it needs to be individual specific so that you benefit from your own provision and are not relying on the council spending policy and government funding policy.  we all pay the same rate of tax and NI and yet the council funded care that we see is vastly different depending on where we live, so it can not be fair to increase tax nationwide for everyone.

i do not actually think it is bad that people are looking for ways to avoid paying for care fees, in the same way that people look for ways to pay less tax, if the laws allow you do so, then as long as you operate within the law, then it makes sense that you do that because if you don't, others will anyway.  it is the law that needs to change, not people's motivation.

Pollycat

Exodi said:

Pollycat said:

Exodi said:

Pollycat said:

AskAsk said:

Pollycat said:

AskAsk said:

Pollycat said:

AskAsk said:

Lindagreenacre said:

Think that I need to go on expensive holidays.  

lol, exactly this!  people spends thousands on expensive cruises when they retire.  time to see the world and enjoy the money they have worked for and saved up all their working life.  then, some years down the line, they need care and if only they had not gone on those expensive holidays and blew all that money.  so now, the rest of us have to pay for this......  things need to change as the rest of us can't afford to pay for care for the elderly any more as it is becoming a crisis with people living longer and so inevitably ending up in care.

So what do you suggest?
That people who have worked all their lives (as I and my husband have) are not allowed to go on holidays in case they need the money to pay for their care that may or may not be required?

Not everyone will end up going into a care home.

with people living longer, care is inevitable.  you may not go into a care home but you may need care visits at home, which is also funded by the council.

at the moment there is no requirement for people to save towards old age, and i think it is about time that people are forced to do so.  it is not possible to expect younger people to continue to pay the bills for the elderly because they have spent all their money on holidays or gifted it to their children and grandchildren.

I have said before, there needs to be a compulsory plan, like the personal pension, where everyone needs to contribute and that can used later on for care needs.  if you don't need to use the pot, you can use it for funeral expense or your relation can inherit it.  At the moment, the public purse pays for everything, and people do not have to contribute if their savings or income are below a certain threshold at the time.  They may have used up a lot of money by that time, that they wouldn't otherwise have done if they thought they needed to save for care.

I am posting purely from my own situation.
Having had a reasonably well paid job (in IT), I've paid a load of NI contributions over my working life.
I've not taken any benefits out, not even child benefit.
My council tax has gone towards funding for schools - which I've not benefited from.
I have a private pension together with my state pension.
That funds my lifestyle, which includes several holidays each year.
I've saved for my retirement - so I've saved for my old age even though there was/is no requirement to do so.
Nobody forced me to do it.

There is no certainty that I will need care at home. If there is, I will be able to fund it myself.

I have no children or grandchildren to gift my money to.

The'public purse' pays nothing for me.

You're banging the drum at the wrong person.

when i reply to your comments, i am not aiming the comments at you but the population as a general concept.  in the past people didn't live as long and so the majority of people did not need to go into a care home before they passed away.  the population is living longer and we aren't designed to live this long, so although we are still alive, our bodies and brains have often shut down and we are living on borrowed time with care and medical advance.

as more and more people fall into this category, social care is going to become unaffordable to the nation as a whole as it is the young people that will need to pay more taxes to fund these social care.  council tax includes a large proportion for social care.  I just don't think this funding model is going to be possible for much longer and soon the government will look into ways of getting people to fund more for themselves.

this may be why they will start to be stricter with people giving away assets before they retire and changing the rules on gifts.

I would object to being told I must save towards potential care home fees.

I hope any government will come up with a better scheme than that.

It's clear you disagree with @AskAsk, but do you have a better suggestion?

I'd hope you can accept that the current situation of pensioners 'gifting' everything they own to their kids or racing through their savings as quickly as possible, so that they don't have a penny to their names at the point they might need care is not tenable.

No, I don't have a better suggestion.
I prefer not to put forward a suggestion at all than propose a crackpot suggestion that you yourself call "not practical, reasonable or agreeable to anyone".

You've misquoted what I said:

Exodi said:

Either we prevent people spending their own money (which is not practical, reasonable or agreeable to anyone), we allocate an individual pot of money towards it that people have no choice over, allocate a public pot via increased taxation, tighten DoA checks, or ???

So of the options I mentioned (but formatted better) were:

1. Prevent people from being able to spend large chunks of their own money (effectively preventing people from 'gifting' any significant amount of money to children or going on multiple expensive cruises) - this is not what AskAsk suggested or was being discussed and what I said would not be practical, reasonable or agreeable to anyone. I included it for completeness.

2. Have people contribute to an individual pot, much like how a private pension works - which is what AskAsk suggested with rules about how discretionary it could be (because clearly a lot of people would prefer to opt out to give the money to their children, and have the taxpayer foot the bill for their care as happens currently).

3. Have people contribute to a national pot, much like how the state pension works - which isn't popular, as we saw with Boris Johnson toying with this idea including a sloppy implementation where originally young people were expected to pay for pensioners care through increased NI, but pensioners would not. I think after a cumulative 19.5% increase to the state pension over the past 2 years, workers are less sympathetic to pensioners at the moment. Yes some pensioners are poor, but more are not.

4. Tightening DoA checks I think most of us could get behind, but I've no idea how much can be achieved here. This might be one of those ideas that sounds good on paper but doesn't achieve much more in practice.

5. Any other ideas people had.

Pollycat said:

Of course I think it wrong to gift money to avoid care home fees.
I've said so on many similar threads.

It does appear we're all on the same page though, I'm personally getting quite fatigued by seeing the same threads week in week out trying to circumvent DoA restrictions and force the taxpayer to fund their parents care so they can realise the maximum inheritance possible. No shame in these threads as people perform the mental gymnastics required to convince themselves that it is somehow not fair to pay for your own care, because [people on benefits], [foreigners], etc.

If everyone with the original means were to pay for their own care, I_Love_comps mum wouldn't need to be paying over £8k per month. I understand we are in this endless feedback loop where 'costs are high because people avoid paying for their own care' and 'people avoid paying for their own care because costs are high' but councils are on their knees and something has to give.

All those people wanting to avoid paying for care (or quite often, it's the children who expect to inherit that look for ways to avoid their parent(s) paying for care to protect that inheritance), before giving their money away should consider what quality of life they may expect if they end up in a LPA funded home like my Mum did (sadly she was unable to pay for her own care).

[Deleted User] said:

I believe the assumption that all LA care homes are bad is misplaced and unfair on those people that work in them to provide a good level of care. There have been plenty of examples of private care homes behaving badly

Pollycat said:
I don't assume that all LA care homes are bad.
I base my opinion on the 2 care/nursing homes that my Mum was unfortunate enough to be in for the last couple of years of her life.
Within a 6 month period she was the subject of 2 safeguarding investigations - 1 in each home.
The 2nd care home did not act in accordance with their processes and procedures after a fall at night. 2 days later she had another fall and was dead a week later.
The care home gave us her belongings.
Half the clothes did not belong to her.
A hairbrush clearly labelled with someone else's name was included.
The care home consistently failed to perform in accordance with their processes and procedures in a number of areas.

My complaint against the care home and LA was upheld by the Ombudsman.

I know that the majority of people employed in care homes do provide a good level of care.
A pity my Mum didn't benefit from that.

Someone posted this on another thread - I agree with Elsien.
And I find any suggestion directed at me regarding DDOA offensive.

Pollycat said:

elsien said:

There is a difference though between spending your money to have a decent quality of life in your retirement and deliberately getting shot of it "just in case." 

SouthCoastBoy said:

elsien said:

There is a difference though between spending your money to have a decent quality of life in your retirement and deliberately getting shot of it "just in case." 

Yes, I won't be deliberately overspending just in case I need to go into a care home, as how do you know when that would be. If you deliberately overspend you may run out of money. Why worry about a care home, it's something that may never happen.

Worse is those people who ask how their parents can preserve their 'inheritance' instead of paying for their own care.

On a thread asking that, one poster said these type of threads were becoming tiresome and suggested that Martin covered 'deprivation of capital' in one of his shows.
That whole thread appears to have been removed.

Exodi

AskAsk said:

Exodi said:

Pollycat said:

Exodi said:

Pollycat said:

AskAsk said:

Pollycat said:

AskAsk said:

Pollycat said:

AskAsk said:

Lindagreenacre said:

Think that I need to go on expensive holidays.  

lol, exactly this!  people spends thousands on expensive cruises when they retire.  time to see the world and enjoy the money they have worked for and saved up all their working life.  then, some years down the line, they need care and if only they had not gone on those expensive holidays and blew all that money.  so now, the rest of us have to pay for this......  things need to change as the rest of us can't afford to pay for care for the elderly any more as it is becoming a crisis with people living longer and so inevitably ending up in care.

So what do you suggest?
That people who have worked all their lives (as I and my husband have) are not allowed to go on holidays in case they need the money to pay for their care that may or may not be required?

Not everyone will end up going into a care home.

with people living longer, care is inevitable.  you may not go into a care home but you may need care visits at home, which is also funded by the council.

at the moment there is no requirement for people to save towards old age, and i think it is about time that people are forced to do so.  it is not possible to expect younger people to continue to pay the bills for the elderly because they have spent all their money on holidays or gifted it to their children and grandchildren.

I have said before, there needs to be a compulsory plan, like the personal pension, where everyone needs to contribute and that can used later on for care needs.  if you don't need to use the pot, you can use it for funeral expense or your relation can inherit it.  At the moment, the public purse pays for everything, and people do not have to contribute if their savings or income are below a certain threshold at the time.  They may have used up a lot of money by that time, that they wouldn't otherwise have done if they thought they needed to save for care.

I am posting purely from my own situation.
Having had a reasonably well paid job (in IT), I've paid a load of NI contributions over my working life.
I've not taken any benefits out, not even child benefit.
My council tax has gone towards funding for schools - which I've not benefited from.
I have a private pension together with my state pension.
That funds my lifestyle, which includes several holidays each year.
I've saved for my retirement - so I've saved for my old age even though there was/is no requirement to do so.
Nobody forced me to do it.

There is no certainty that I will need care at home. If there is, I will be able to fund it myself.

I have no children or grandchildren to gift my money to.

The'public purse' pays nothing for me.

You're banging the drum at the wrong person.

when i reply to your comments, i am not aiming the comments at you but the population as a general concept.  in the past people didn't live as long and so the majority of people did not need to go into a care home before they passed away.  the population is living longer and we aren't designed to live this long, so although we are still alive, our bodies and brains have often shut down and we are living on borrowed time with care and medical advance.

as more and more people fall into this category, social care is going to become unaffordable to the nation as a whole as it is the young people that will need to pay more taxes to fund these social care.  council tax includes a large proportion for social care.  I just don't think this funding model is going to be possible for much longer and soon the government will look into ways of getting people to fund more for themselves.

this may be why they will start to be stricter with people giving away assets before they retire and changing the rules on gifts.

I would object to being told I must save towards potential care home fees.

I hope any government will come up with a better scheme than that.

It's clear you disagree with @AskAsk, but do you have a better suggestion?

I'd hope you can accept that the current situation of pensioners 'gifting' everything they own to their kids or racing through their savings as quickly as possible, so that they don't have a penny to their names at the point they might need care is not tenable.

No, I don't have a better suggestion.
I prefer not to put forward a suggestion at all than propose a crackpot suggestion that you yourself call "not practical, reasonable or agreeable to anyone".

You've misquoted what I said:

Exodi said:

Either we prevent people spending their own money (which is not practical, reasonable or agreeable to anyone), we allocate an individual pot of money towards it that people have no choice over, allocate a public pot via increased taxation, tighten DoA checks, or ???

So of the options I mentioned (but formatted better) were:

1. Prevent people from being able to spend large chunks of their own money (effectively preventing people from 'gifting' any significant amount of money to children or going on multiple expensive cruises) - this is not what AskAsk suggested or was being discussed and what I said would not be practical, reasonable or agreeable to anyone. I included it for completeness.

2. Have people contribute to an individual pot, much like how a private pension works - which is what AskAsk suggested with rules about how discretionary it could be (because clearly a lot of people would prefer to opt out to give the money to their children, and have the taxpayer foot the bill for their care as happens currently).

3. Have people contribute to a national pot, much like how the state pension works - which isn't popular, as we saw with Boris Johnson toying with this idea including a sloppy implementation where originally young people were expected to pay for pensioners care through increased NI, but pensioners would not. I think after a cumulative 19.5% increase to the state pension over the past 2 years, workers are less sympathetic to pensioners at the moment. Yes some pensioners are poor, but more are not.

4. Tightening DoA checks I think most of us could get behind, but I've no idea how much can be achieved here. This might be one of those ideas that sounds good on paper but doesn't achieve much more in practice.

5. Any other ideas people had.

Pollycat said:

Of course I think it wrong to gift money to avoid care home fees.
I've said so on many similar threads.

It does appear we're all on the same page though, I'm personally getting quite fatigued by seeing the same threads week in week out trying to circumvent DoA restrictions and force the taxpayer to fund their parents care so they can realise the maximum inheritance possible. No shame in these threads as people perform the mental gymnastics required to convince themselves that it is somehow not fair to pay for your own care, because [people on benefits], [foreigners], etc.

If everyone with the original means were to pay for their own care, I_Love_comps mum wouldn't need to be paying over £8k per month. I understand we are in this endless feedback loop where 'costs are high because people avoid paying for their own care' and 'people avoid paying for their own care because costs are high' but councils are on their knees and something has to give.

the problem with increasing taxation to help with care is not specific enough as each council has responsibility for their residents and each council will have their own policy on funding so mass tax increase will not be fair.  it needs to be individual specific so that you benefit from your own provision and are not relying on the council spending policy and government funding policy.  we all pay the same rate of tax and NI and yet the council funded care that we see is vastly different depending on where we live, so it can not be fair to increase tax nationwide for everyone.

i do not actually think it is bad that people are looking for ways to avoid paying for care fees, in the same way that people look for ways to pay less tax, if the laws allow you do so, then as long as you operate within the law, then it makes sense that you do that because if you don't, others will anyway.  it is the law that needs to change, not people's motivation.

I don't like that you keep representing your opinions as facts, but the idea you're dismissing out of hand can't be that implausible as it was implemented by the current government not that long ago. What Pollycat said is still valid about forcing everyone to save for the very small possibility they might be one of the unlucky few that go into a carehome, when the majority of workers already don't have two pennies to rub together, doesn't sound very realistic.

I don't think talking about fairness comes into it - my council tax is higher than the same band of property in Westminster, Mayfair or Kensington. Similarly, we all pay the same rates of tax, yet the government will always be spending it disproportionately across the UK. Some people pay far more in tax than they take out, some people receive more in benefits than they ever paid in. You could die before you ever receive your state pension, etc.

Life isn't fair. I think it's about coming up with the solution that works for the most people, while remaining sympathetic to the vulnerable.

Your last sentence made me regret defending you throughout this thread, because it's a classic justification/excuse given by the poster of a DoA thread.

I don't think that looking for ways to avoid paying for your own care fees should be championed or likened to tax avoidance. Estate planning could be likened to tax avoidance. Looking for ways to avoid paying for your own care fees is more suitably likened to tax evasion.

The 'others do it, so why shouldn't I' is another commonly used excuse. It is already illegal to deprive yourself of assets to avoid paying for your care, there is no ambiguity in the law or intention. The fact people go out their way to deliberately give everything away a decade before they could potentially need care shouldn't be praised, they are plundering the pockets of the likes of me and you by forcing us to foot the bill for their care, so they can give all their cash to their children. Nothing charitable or economical about it.

Exodi

Pollycat said:

Exodi said:

Pollycat said:

Exodi said:

Pollycat said:

AskAsk said:

Pollycat said:

AskAsk said:

Pollycat said:

AskAsk said:

Lindagreenacre said:

Think that I need to go on expensive holidays.  

lol, exactly this!  people spends thousands on expensive cruises when they retire.  time to see the world and enjoy the money they have worked for and saved up all their working life.  then, some years down the line, they need care and if only they had not gone on those expensive holidays and blew all that money.  so now, the rest of us have to pay for this......  things need to change as the rest of us can't afford to pay for care for the elderly any more as it is becoming a crisis with people living longer and so inevitably ending up in care.

So what do you suggest?
That people who have worked all their lives (as I and my husband have) are not allowed to go on holidays in case they need the money to pay for their care that may or may not be required?

Not everyone will end up going into a care home.

with people living longer, care is inevitable.  you may not go into a care home but you may need care visits at home, which is also funded by the council.

at the moment there is no requirement for people to save towards old age, and i think it is about time that people are forced to do so.  it is not possible to expect younger people to continue to pay the bills for the elderly because they have spent all their money on holidays or gifted it to their children and grandchildren.

I have said before, there needs to be a compulsory plan, like the personal pension, where everyone needs to contribute and that can used later on for care needs.  if you don't need to use the pot, you can use it for funeral expense or your relation can inherit it.  At the moment, the public purse pays for everything, and people do not have to contribute if their savings or income are below a certain threshold at the time.  They may have used up a lot of money by that time, that they wouldn't otherwise have done if they thought they needed to save for care.

I am posting purely from my own situation.
Having had a reasonably well paid job (in IT), I've paid a load of NI contributions over my working life.
I've not taken any benefits out, not even child benefit.
My council tax has gone towards funding for schools - which I've not benefited from.
I have a private pension together with my state pension.
That funds my lifestyle, which includes several holidays each year.
I've saved for my retirement - so I've saved for my old age even though there was/is no requirement to do so.
Nobody forced me to do it.

There is no certainty that I will need care at home. If there is, I will be able to fund it myself.

I have no children or grandchildren to gift my money to.

The'public purse' pays nothing for me.

You're banging the drum at the wrong person.

when i reply to your comments, i am not aiming the comments at you but the population as a general concept.  in the past people didn't live as long and so the majority of people did not need to go into a care home before they passed away.  the population is living longer and we aren't designed to live this long, so although we are still alive, our bodies and brains have often shut down and we are living on borrowed time with care and medical advance.

as more and more people fall into this category, social care is going to become unaffordable to the nation as a whole as it is the young people that will need to pay more taxes to fund these social care.  council tax includes a large proportion for social care.  I just don't think this funding model is going to be possible for much longer and soon the government will look into ways of getting people to fund more for themselves.

this may be why they will start to be stricter with people giving away assets before they retire and changing the rules on gifts.

I would object to being told I must save towards potential care home fees.

I hope any government will come up with a better scheme than that.

It's clear you disagree with @AskAsk, but do you have a better suggestion?

I'd hope you can accept that the current situation of pensioners 'gifting' everything they own to their kids or racing through their savings as quickly as possible, so that they don't have a penny to their names at the point they might need care is not tenable.

No, I don't have a better suggestion.
I prefer not to put forward a suggestion at all than propose a crackpot suggestion that you yourself call "not practical, reasonable or agreeable to anyone".

You've misquoted what I said:

Exodi said:

Either we prevent people spending their own money (which is not practical, reasonable or agreeable to anyone), we allocate an individual pot of money towards it that people have no choice over, allocate a public pot via increased taxation, tighten DoA checks, or ???

So of the options I mentioned (but formatted better) were:

1. Prevent people from being able to spend large chunks of their own money (effectively preventing people from 'gifting' any significant amount of money to children or going on multiple expensive cruises) - this is not what AskAsk suggested or was being discussed and what I said would not be practical, reasonable or agreeable to anyone. I included it for completeness.

2. Have people contribute to an individual pot, much like how a private pension works - which is what AskAsk suggested with rules about how discretionary it could be (because clearly a lot of people would prefer to opt out to give the money to their children, and have the taxpayer foot the bill for their care as happens currently).

3. Have people contribute to a national pot, much like how the state pension works - which isn't popular, as we saw with Boris Johnson toying with this idea including a sloppy implementation where originally young people were expected to pay for pensioners care through increased NI, but pensioners would not. I think after a cumulative 19.5% increase to the state pension over the past 2 years, workers are less sympathetic to pensioners at the moment. Yes some pensioners are poor, but more are not.

4. Tightening DoA checks I think most of us could get behind, but I've no idea how much can be achieved here. This might be one of those ideas that sounds good on paper but doesn't achieve much more in practice.

5. Any other ideas people had.

Pollycat said:

Of course I think it wrong to gift money to avoid care home fees.
I've said so on many similar threads.

It does appear we're all on the same page though, I'm personally getting quite fatigued by seeing the same threads week in week out trying to circumvent DoA restrictions and force the taxpayer to fund their parents care so they can realise the maximum inheritance possible. No shame in these threads as people perform the mental gymnastics required to convince themselves that it is somehow not fair to pay for your own care, because [people on benefits], [foreigners], etc.

If everyone with the original means were to pay for their own care, I_Love_comps mum wouldn't need to be paying over £8k per month. I understand we are in this endless feedback loop where 'costs are high because people avoid paying for their own care' and 'people avoid paying for their own care because costs are high' but councils are on their knees and something has to give.

All those people wanting to avoid paying for care (or quite often, it's the children who expect to inherit that look for ways to avoid their parent(s) paying for care to protect that inheritance), before giving their money away should consider what quality of life they may expect if they end up in a LPA funded home like my Mum did (sadly she was unable to pay for her own care).

[Deleted User] said:

I believe the assumption that all LA care homes are bad is misplaced and unfair on those people that work in them to provide a good level of care. There have been plenty of examples of private care homes behaving badly

Pollycat said:
I don't assume that all LA care homes are bad.
I base my opinion on the 2 care/nursing homes that my Mum was unfortunate enough to be in for the last couple of years of her life.
Within a 6 month period she was the subject of 2 safeguarding investigations - 1 in each home.
The 2nd care home did not act in accordance with their processes and procedures after a fall at night. 2 days later she had another fall and was dead a week later.
The care home gave us her belongings.
Half the clothes did not belong to her.
A hairbrush clearly labelled with someone else's name was included.
The care home consistently failed to perform in accordance with their processes and procedures in a number of areas.

My complaint against the care home and LA was upheld by the Ombudsman.

I know that the majority of people employed in care homes do provide a good level of care.
A pity my Mum didn't benefit from that.

Someone posted this on another thread - I agree with Elsien.
And I find any suggestion directed at me regarding DDOA offensive.

Pollycat said:

elsien said:

There is a difference though between spending your money to have a decent quality of life in your retirement and deliberately getting shot of it "just in case." 

SouthCoastBoy said:

elsien said:

There is a difference though between spending your money to have a decent quality of life in your retirement and deliberately getting shot of it "just in case." 

Yes, I won't be deliberately overspending just in case I need to go into a care home, as how do you know when that would be. If you deliberately overspend you may run out of money. Why worry about a care home, it's something that may never happen.

Worse is those people who ask how their parents can preserve their 'inheritance' instead of paying for their own care.

On a thread asking that, one poster said these type of threads were becoming tiresome and suggested that Martin covered 'deprivation of capital' in one of his shows.
That whole thread appears to have been removed.

Hi @Pollycat,

Sorry I didn't see your message before I posted. Agree with everything you say in this comment (and sorry about your mum). To be clear (I don't know whether you were responding to me in particular) but I'd hope that no-one thinks you would consider DDOA - it's clear from your views this and many other threads you couldn't be any further in the opposite camp.

Regarding "On a thread asking that, one poster said these type of threads were becoming tiresome and suggested that Martin covered 'deprivation of capital' in one of his shows. That whole thread appears to have been removed." I suspect that was me. Frustrated by these threads in general I've been repeatedly requesting that these threads should not be allowed (it's not allowed to make a thread asking how to rob banks, I don't know why it's allowed to make a thread asking how to rob taxpayers), and it would be useful for Martin to proactively address this on TV because there is clearly a deeply ingrained attitude that it's somehow unfair to pay for your own care, and we hear the same 2 or 3 arguments repeated time and time again - sometimes people think as they've 'paid into the system their whole life' it should be free, or usually some justification involving people on benefits, or foreigners, or tax-avoiding rich people, or any other demographic you might see vilified in the Daily Mail.

MobileSaver said:

Exodi said:

councils are on their knees and something has to give.

As you say, something has to give.

One approach is to reduce the cost of care and so perhaps allowing dormitory-style bedrooms instead of everyone getting a private room is a way of making limited funds go further? (A knock-on benefit being it would disincentivise many people from deliberately disposing of assets...)

Half of me can see where you're coming from, but then the other half feels it's unfair to penalise people that are in LA care homes through no fault of their own. No easy answer unfortunately, very divisive and no political motivation to fix it.

Gavin83

MobileSaver said:

Exodi said:

councils are on their knees and something has to give.

As you say, something has to give.

One approach is to reduce the cost of care and so perhaps allowing dormitory-style bedrooms instead of everyone getting a private room is a way of making limited funds go further? (A knock-on benefit being it would disincentivise many people from deliberately disposing of assets...)

While I don't disagree with the suggestion as such I don't think it would make anywhere near as much difference as you think it would. A fraction of the cost of care fees will go towards the room. The biggest cost will be for staff and there's little you can do to reduce that.

I'm not really sure there's a way to reduce the costs of a council funded care home, at least to any amount that would make a difference.

The only real logical option is an increase in tax, in one way or another to pay for it. However whatever solution is implemented I think the burden should be removed from councils and social care costs covered by central Government instead. A lot of councils are struggling and a major reason for this is social care costs. It's an unfair distribution as well given some councils have very few elderly people in and some have lots. There's a reason the likes of Kensington and Westminster have some of the lowest council tax rates in the country yet the local areas are very well taken care of. 

MobileSaver

Exodi said:

Half of me can see where you're coming from, but then the other half feels it's unfair to penalise people that are in LA care homes through no fault of their own.

I don't see how it's penalising anyone - the state is still providing a roof over your head, daily meals and the same level of care; it's just accepting the reality that the state can no longer afford to give you the luxury of your own private room.

An analogy is hospitals and I don't think many would suggest NHS patients are being penalised when they have to go on a general ward compared to private patients having their own room.

Gavin83 said:

MobileSaver said:

One approach is to reduce the cost of care and so perhaps allowing dormitory-style bedrooms instead of everyone getting a private room is a way of making limited funds go further? (A knock-on benefit being it would disincentivise many people from deliberately disposing of assets...)

While I don't disagree with the suggestion as such I don't think it would make anywhere near as much difference as you think it would. A fraction of the cost of care fees will go towards the room. The biggest cost will be for staff and there's little you can do to reduce that.

I agree that it's no silver bullet but it would be a step in the right direction.

Obviously initial building costs would be less and ongoing repairs, maintenance and running costs would be less. Similarly I think the economies of scale mean there would be a saving in staff costs although as you say this wouldn't be huge but every little helps.

Perhaps the biggest benefit would be the incentive it gives people to think about funding their own care and/or the disincentive to give away their assets to their children?

Savvy_Sue

MobileSaver said:

An analogy is hospitals and I don't think many would suggest NHS patients are being penalised when they have to go on a general ward compared to private patients having their own room.

I think you'll find that increasingly the NHS is putting patients in single rooms rather than on wards. Certainly the newest hospital around here is single rooms only (and I haven'thad to visit the less new one recently).

Plus, post-Covid, the appetite for sharing rooms is probably reduced even further ...

MobileSaver

Savvy_Sue said:

MobileSaver said:

An analogy is hospitals and I don't think many would suggest NHS patients are being penalised when they have to go on a general ward compared to private patients having their own room.

I think you'll find that increasingly the NHS is putting patients in single rooms rather than on wards. Certainly the newest hospital around here is single rooms only

Less than 1% of hospitals in the UK are single room only and even if every new hospital promised to be built by 2030 was single room too, that will still be less than 5% of NHS hospitals in the UK so it's a tiny proportion.

Many NHS hospitals have single "amenity" rooms as well as general wards but you normally have to pay extra which is kind of my point - if people want the luxury of a private room then there's nothing wrong with having to pay more for it.

Spendless

I suspect it'll take a multi pronged approach in order to 'solve' some of this. No idea exactly what but some ideas, allowing people to keep more of their assets would possibly help towards people not avoiding them. IIRC Theresa May when PM, suggested that people could keep £100K before it was used for care costs. They was then a huge outcry about it from the gen public, which I didn't understand, the amount you can keep is £14, 250 currently (and you're helped with costs between 14250 and 23250). Why were people objecting to being able to keep more? Looking into DOA as standard. I recently discovered it's that an LA can look into it rather than they will. (Some) Pensions used to have life insurance as part of them. I have at least one pension dating back from the 1990s that has. Maybe return to something that that but instead of the LI something that helps with care costs. 

Not everyone will go into care but the longer you live it's possibly more likely. One of my Nans developed dementia and went into care a month before her 91st birthday, she then lived for a further 8 years (and of the relatives I've had in care all have lived longer than the average 12 months talked about) . My other Nan is 98.5 living in her own house, recently went into hospital following a fall, the carers set up in a plan for her discharge stopped coming after  3 visits deeming her 'too capable' but she now has an alarm on her wrist and a warning that another fall may mean she has to go into care and she's dreading this happening to her.