Financial assessment this morning - big surprise

[germain]

Hello all,

The Financial Assessor came from our LA this morning as our Mum went into a CH last week.
We knew we would be self funding only for a very short time but its what happens after that surprised us.

I ploughed through all the Age Concern fact sheets etc last night and ended up very confused.

It appears that rather than greatly reducing your capital - the minute you go under £21,500 its only income that counts - (including the "notional income" from your capital) - so that our Mum will only have to pay £174 p.w. from then rather than the £430 we're paying now.
Also told that our LA have something called "fairer funding" and don't allow any CH in the area to charge top-ups and they're not allowed to charge different rates for private or LA funded clients.

We had though Mum would be paying nearly the full amount with the LA putting in around £20.00 per week and her capital would go down to almost nil in just over a year.

Sorry not explained very well but the man who came was excellent and has left us a really clear info sheet.

What a relief ! I know that some LAs do things differently but at least the "fairer funding" clause may be worth pushing nationwide as I've read a few posts re top-ups etc . If one LA can do this - shouldn't they all ?

Regards
Germain

 

[jenniferpa]

Germain

I'm glad you've got this sorted out - that interveneing time between being fully self-funded and being fully LA funded is not something that we discuss very often, so that's important information to bear in mind.

Fairer funding is something I think we could all get behind. I'm not sure, though, what effect it would have on the availibility of places for LA clients. I mean to say, surely a care home could opt out - if they chose not to accept LA clients then they could charge whatever they wanted to (or the market would bear)? I don't know whether it would happen, but one could envision a result where essentially there were two types of home - those that accepted LA funded clients and those that didn't. And that's worrisome - unless the LA was prepared to pay a reasonable rate could not the LA homes end up as very basic? The other thing that impacts on this is the housing market in the UK. With house prices at the levels are they are now, even people with quite modest resources can end up with property worth a great deal. If you have lost your spouse and now need to enter a care home that property could fund many years of care even at exhorbitant rates. Not that the system that pertains at the moment is great, but you do wonder at the ramifications down the line.