Protecting a house against long-term care money grab

JimLin

Hi,

Finally back from the hospital. As I said earlier, I had written a detailed reply but managed to lose it as I posted it.

My mother's stoke is significant, as are the effects on her speech and mobility.

margaretclare - at no point had I referred to this as an inheritance issue.

monkeyspanner, EdInvestor and others, thank you for your considered and informative replies.

My reference to it being a money grab comes from some of the research I have done on the web. In general official websites state along the lines of "if you have assets of more than £21,000, then your home will be sold to pay for your nursing care". To me, this is niether useful or informative. My concern is to understand the process used to use the assets to provide the care. To me, the line "your home will be sold to pay for your nursing care" implies that the money will be thown into a big pot and used as someone else sees fit. If my mother does need to liquidate her assets, then I want to know that all that money will be spent on her and not swallowed up in administrative costs for example. It seems very difficult to get a straight forward explanation.

At the moment it is difficult to do any planning, as it is unclear where she will plateau, we are just trying to get ahead of the game. I'm sorry if the above isn't clear, but I was awake most of the night worrying about it (and other things), as you can see from the original post.

Cheers,
JimLin

EdInvestor

JimLin wrote: »

My reference to it being a money grab comes from some of the research I have done on the web. In general official websites state along the lines of "if you have assets of more than £21,000, then your home will be sold to pay for your nursing care". To me, this is niether useful or informative.

I agree.The situation is much more complex than this: not only from the point of view of eligibility for continuing care from the NHS but also on ways of funding care, the benefits available etc.

Some useful tips here:

https://www.hsbcpensions.co.uk/nhfa/pdfs/is6.pdf

One of the major problems is that most people get bouced into this situation in an emergency context with no previous knowledge of how things work.It's a very steep learning curve.

monkeyspanner

London Diva

Whilst I agree with your assessment of hospitals completely, and the need to remove a relative from a potentially dangerous environment as quickly as possible our personal experience of the continuing healthcare system suggests you need to ensure that assessments are carried out and that the family and patient are involved.

Patients rights in respect of continuing healthcare assessments are routinely disregarded and despite the introduction of a new national assessment framework in October last the process is not made clear to relatives and patients representives. The system and the people who administer it have been subverted to gatekeepers of funds and extremely ill patients are being denied an unbiased assessment process.

Yes you can challenge the assessment after the event if an assessment has ever been carried out and if you can find anyone who is willing to explain the appeal process. That is why challenges can take many years to resolve. In our PCT only appeals where the patient has died are being processed and some of these date back up to 8 years and we have been told many of the patient notes are 'missing'.

Regarding funding, yes there are better uses for these funds than keeping a patient in an expensive hospital bed. So all the more reason for the PCT's to run an efficient, transparent, inclusive, and unbiased assessment system which is demonstrably fair. Additionally in our PCT there is in excess of £3million locked up in reserves pending the results of appeals. Presumeably there are better uses for these funds also.

If you want to talk about waste what about the waste of money invovled in designing a system to prevent patients obtaining the care funding they need and paying many senior 'health professionals' to sit on panels whose only purpose is to deny access to funding?

monkeyspanner

JimLin wrote: »

Hi,

My concern is to understand the process used to use the assets to provide the care. To me, the line "your home will be sold to pay for your nursing care" implies that the money will be thown into a big pot and used as someone else sees fit. If my mother does need to liquidate her assets, then I want to know that all that money will be spent on her and not swallowed up in administrative costs for example. It seems very difficult to get a straight forward explanation.

Cheers,
JimLin

As your mother will more than likely be completely self funding you and your mother will have the choice of care home or nursing home. As your mother has limited funds other than the house you will probably need to sell the property to fund her care. If our experience of this process is anything to go by as soon as it is known your mother is self funding social services will be only too glad to get her off their case load as fast as possible. You will be pointed in the direction of a care home list and no advice will be offered other than a vague type of facility to look for.

There is no 'big pot' and how you choose to arrange the funding will be up to you. As I mentioned your mother as a self funder will probably end up paying more than social service supported residents this is usually explained away as 'buying power', but it does mean you mother will effectively be subsidising the social services supported residents. In my MIL's relatively inexpensive and excellent care home she pays £415 per week as opposed to £314 for the same level of care for supported residents. This will continue until her money reduces to £21500 at which time the family will have to pay the £101 weekly top-up or face the possiblity of the council insisting she move to a care home which will accept their £314 rate.

You are doing exactly the right thing in informing yourself as much as possible, as edinvestor says it is a very steep learning curve.

monkeyspanner

Margaretclare
The OP has already explained their use of the phrase which upsets you so much.

You are right serious strokes can have devastating consequences, but they are not necessarily the ultimate cause of death and are not always followed by another stroke. My dad had a stroke which left him partially paralysed on one side, and unable to speak. He lived for several years after and eventually died of heart failure. However, the OP did not ask for advice on strokes and their after effects. They asked about long term care funding.

Due to recent legal rulings it has been established that where a patient's need is primarily medical then the NHS have a continuing responsibility to fund care. Despite this the NHS continues to ignore the outcome of previous legal cases and deny funding to patients whose primary need is medical. Whatever you may think about the rights and wrongs of funding these patients care and preferable priorities there are legal preceedents which the NHS must follow.

Bearing this in mind the phrase 'long term care grab' would seem to be entirely appropriate IMHO. If the NHS are forcing people to self-fund in situations where the NHS has no legal grounds to insist on self-funding then that is government misappropriation of the patients money.

As regards diverting attention, you have been trying to divert the focus of this thread away from the OP's request for information about how long term care is funded. It is a sad situation when we have employees of the state in the NHS and Social Services who are unable or unwilling to explain to a patient's relative how the system works and what options they have.

It will only be the 'end of story' when the NHS actually accepts the situation or the legal responsibility of the NHS is changed, which will inevitably be the case as the concept of 'cradle to grave' is no longer economically viable.

EdInvestor

Hi Monkeyspanner

monkeyspanner wrote: »

As regards diverting attention, you have been trying to divert the focus of this thread away from the OP's request for information about how long term care is funded.

I think you may have the wrong end of the stick here. While a number of us may have misconstrued the focus of the OP's first post, IMHO the heading of the thread does tend to lead to misunderstanding. This is in the context of many months of posts on this subject where the welfare of the sick person and the fate of his/her money are not necessarily apparently given the same weight.

monkeyspanner

Ed
You made me doubt my understanding of the original post so I read it again. Although the OP does mention the stroke the main thrust of the post is finance.

There have, as you say, been many months of discussion on various threads about care home finance vs. patient welfare but we cannot assume the OP is aware of these discussions. Neither can we assume this is all that is on his/her mind, but it may be the subject that they need clarifying. Hence the statement in OP third post "If my mother does need to liquidate her assets, then I want to know that all that money will be spent on her and not swallowed up in administrative costs for example." As I cannot pretend to be able to divine someones character or motivation from a title and few lines of a post I try to confine myself to useful advice related to the question asked as I have seen you also do.

The central problem is that the finance issues become overly emphasised because patients and patients relatives are not made aware of the way that care is financed by the public employees who should be doing this. Therefore the concentration moves away from the welfare of the patient because there is understandable concern about the finance issue. This concern is emphasised because the public employees have been put in the position of gatekeepers of limited funds rather than their priority being the provision of assistance to the patient and family. As an end user of these services who has been trying to navigate this process for the last several months this is my experience of service provision. I have been told by a senior manager in social services that 'we expect clients and their families to do their own research about these issues'. So the very clear message is don't come to us for advice. So that is why people end up asking for help on forums like this because they feel that they are being kept in the dark by publicly funded bodies.

pepsicola_2

EdInvestor wrote: »

Hi Monkeyspanner



I think you may have the wrong end of the stick here. While a number of us may have misconstrued the focus of the OP's first post, IMHO the heading of the thread does tend to lead to misunderstanding. This is in the context of many months of posts on this subject where the welfare of the sick person and the fate of his/her money are not necessarily apparently given the same weight.

and what exactly are other threads to do with this one surely the op should be given the same courtesy as every other new user on mse.

GrannyKate and Londondiva at least have a courteous answser edited to add as does the previous poster who seems to have posted at the same time as i did

EdInvestor

monkeyspanner wrote: »

I have been told by a senior manager in social services that 'we expect clients and their families to do their own research about these issues'. So the very clear message is don't come to us for advice. So that is why people end up asking for help on forums like this because they feel that they are being kept in the dark by publicly funded bodies.

And this of course is the root of the problem - and it's but a short difference from being kept in the dark to being suspicious of a rip-off. I suggest we put this particular debate to bed now as it seems to be particularly prone to misunderstanding and suggest to the OP that he comes back with update on a new thread later.

BTW there is much helpful material on financing care and battling the system in the "Silver Savers" forum, further down.This is not the correct forum for this issue.

LondonDiva

If you are looking for information etc on homes, have a look on CSCI's site as they will publish details of the reviews etc.

you can ask social serivces for a list of homes int he borough & then look for their ratings and the comments relating to them.