Nursing home fees + annuities – advice sought
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I am assuming that your mother has already been assessed and does not qualify for Continuing Health Care?
https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/health-wellbeing/health-services/nhs-continuing-healthcare/
You say that your mother favours neither living in her nursing home nor in her own home - in these circumstances there seems little point in moving her from the nursing home to her own home.
One assumes that she is getting higher rate Attendance Allowance and possibly the nursing care component?
She also has her state pension and (some other pension provision?)
so that she may be able to cover her care fees for rather longer than the three years mentioned above?
Re INCA, see https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5894044 post 4.
Is the house currently rented out?0 -
She is regularly assessed for Continuing Health Care. We went through the CHC hoops with our father, who was eligible for CHC funding for around 18 months in the same nursing home. She is getting Attendance Allowance and her state pension, yes. The house is not rented out as it's used as a base at weekends for family visiting. Thanks for your thoughts here.0
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Just a few thoughts.
When my father was ill, I'd got him into a hospice where he was very content, and then he suddenly got the idea he wanted to move to a nursing home, which he did. I had grave misgivings but he didn't want to listen to me as he'd come under the influence of an old friend on the matter. The move was not a success, even by his own admission, and he passed away about two weeks later.
No two cases are the same obviously, but reading your story did ring a few bells, and if I could do it all again I think I'd have made more effort to get him to stay at the hospice.
Prior to the hospice my father had a care package in his own home but another thing I found was that an ordinary house can be such a dangerous place for an elderly person with declining health.0 -
The house is not rented out as it's used as a base at weekends for family visiting. Thanks for your thoughts here.
The family should be paying a commercial rate to rent her house unless she has the capacity to actively gift them free use of it. If a Deprivation of Liberty order is in place that sounds highly dubious.
The attorneys are on extremely dodgy ground if they're trying to claim it's in her interests for the family members not to pay for an AirBNB or hotel.
In your posts there is no indication that mum wants to return home (only "some pressure within our family"), and no reason it would be in her interests for her to return home, which means her house should be on the market and the family should stop treating it as a free hotel.0 -
Hi Malthusian and ThemeOne. Thanks for your thoughts. On the ‘free hotel’ aspect, due to the intensity of their illnesses – both complex – the three children try to support the situation. All of us live a substantial distance away. Supporting intense long-term illness, including regular long-distance driving, is expensive and demanding. There are also daily phone calls and emails to the nursing home, private therapists and paperwork to be organised. Much bill-paying and record-keeping. Our incomes and circumstances are all different but we all have to be careful.0
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It doesn’t sound ideal to me for various reasons, after living in a care home for 5 years mum would have gotten used to group living and social interaction in a secure setting, returning home could mean mum might become non responsive to her care as she feels it’s her home and the carers are not wanted so it could be a battle.
The house doesn’t sound ideal for her and you might need to adapt it to make it suitable, has mum spent time in her house? Has she stayed overnight? How does she seem to be when she’s in her house?
Unfortunately not all carers are great, worse case Scenario is mums stuck in the house with a carer that isn’t very good at her job and nobody is really checking what’s going on if you are all living far away.
If you do decide on this you could sort out some trials try weekends and a week, and you will get to know how she is with private carers
Forget about the money focus on mum getting the best possible care, she has the money to pay for it at the end of the day
Plus care needs change, the 24 hour care could end up costing double if you need more care ie 2 carers at a time and mum could also actually end up in care again and have to cope with another move againMortgage start Oct 12 £104,500
current May 20 -£56,290_£52,067
term 9 years aiming on being mortgage free by 7
Weight Up & down 14st 7lb0 -
Hi Malthusian and ThemeOne. Thanks for your thoughts. On the ‘free hotel’ aspect, due to the intensity of their illnesses – both complex – the three children try to support the situation. All of us live a substantial distance away. Supporting intense long-term illness, including regular long-distance driving, is expensive and demanding. There are also daily phone calls and emails to the nursing home, private therapists and paperwork to be organised.
I thought she was in a nursing home. Day-to-day support is their job. What support are the children giving her that makes it in her interests for them not to pay for an AirBNB or a hotel while they are visiting? Why do they need the use of a free house to make phone calls and emails?
It is in the mother's interest to have visitors, it is not in her interests for them to save money by using her house as a free hotel, that's in the children's interests. It prevents her from selling the house and using the capital in her own best interests to support her care needs and maximise her financial security.
This is no different from an attorney trying to justify giving the donor's money to the children on the grounds it's to cover their travel expenses for visits. It is not in the donor's interests and is unlawful. Unless there is evidence the donor wanted these gifts to be made, which would include paying their expenses while she was in control of her own affairs and specifying that she wanted these gifts to continue in her Lasting Power of Attorney. If she did those things then fair enough.
If someone else's elderly mother had been renting a retirement home before moving into care and her entire assets consisted of £480,000 in cash, would the Attorneys think it would be in her interests to use £300,000 of her money to buy a house for them to stay in for free? It is the same decision.0 -
On the subject of carers we had used live in care when our elderly mum came home from hospital after breaking her hip.
Although live in care, that means they only work for around 8 hours a day, so if she needs help though the night if its more than 2 or 3 times say for the loo then they will say that is too much.
It just didnt work out for us.. She went into a home and that took so much pressure off my sister and myself. She just needed much more care than 1 carer could give in 8 hours..
Something to think about..0 -
Do you really want to sit her in front of the TV watching Coronation St or the like (my worst nightmare by the way) or do you want her to have some social interaction which would be much better for her. You would need a minimum of 4 carers to look after someone for a week. Who is going to be there to see they do their jobs properly?
What a lot of people miss realising about care homes, even the lesser ones, is that people visit & those people see what is going on. Many people have the same visitors every day. Many of those visitors actually "visit" people who don't normally have visitors whilst they are there. Visitors also get to know one another & update on things if they have been missing for a few days.
For instance, when I was working & could usually only visit in the evenings, the visitor to the person normally sitting next to her in the lounge would talk to both of them, when I went in the evening I would do the same. At the weekend it could occasionally be a 6 way conversation. The more stimulation the better. Once the first bite of dementia takes hold the more stimulation the better, isolation in these cases is bad.0
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