To be shocked that Derek Draper didn’t qualify for NHS Continuing Healthcare

If the money is to come from the tax payer, then are you all willing to pay more tax to fund it so that Mabel's children can inherit her house? I'm not.

That's a typical, and entirely understandable, view. It's a very problematic one though, because it will increasingly erode the appeal of buying your own home and saving for retirement. Why not just spend it while you can, knowing you'll get your care (should you need it) funded anyway? That's certainly not a sustainable model!

CHC is non means tested but I have observed that people who have articulate families who would likely challenge get it rubber stamped whereas poorer families get it refused.

@Hayliebells - definitely an element of judgement. My mum couldn’t mobilise really but initially could move on her zimmer with 2 carers supporting- to the commode, and it’s physically good actually even such limited movement. The last social worker assessment kept pushing to say she may be ok with one carer, and maybe they could shorten calls. I pushed back on this and she said that they’d leave it as it was set up as she paid. Whilst glad for my ma I was appalled.
Our local council now has a new thing where people will pay for ‘planned’ care and not actual delivered care - so those that are ok on the day can be dealt with faster but still have same charges - also other way round but that’s going to be very rare as if a client consistently needs more they are reassessed. I am outraged at this and previously objected plus wrote to MPs (mine and mum’s) when it was suggested - still implementing it from April and I objected and wrote again, despite it not now personally affecting my family currently- no response even at all.
I recognise finding is cut to the bone but generally the current elderly did not expect this at all and couldn’t have even planned for it. I expect ultimately there may be some insurance or similar that can be picked up at a younger age - for further money making of folk.

@IsadoraQuill
If you watch the Panorama on Hillingdon it is down to migration. The population of Hillingdon rose by 10% last year and that is true for many London Boroughs and other urban areas. Most workers who arrive want to live in urban areas near to work and to communities that reflect their own situation.

Perhaps the person who wrote that all women should vote Tory should read these accounts! No words can be said to ease the pain of all these people.

@Keha yep and it’s very unlikely to get 24 hours a day home care
I run up to 2 iV bags a day ( 12-16 hours ) so iV trained which is nursing care plus up to 4 iV meds 3 times a day etc
I do all iV dressings
trained on Mutiple IV antibiotics and it took 6 years to get more than 10 hours of respite care a week and now get 40 from CHC
Then the NHS tell me often as in the doctors when they are discharging home like last time when she was on IV antibiotics as well as her usual IV bags PLUS replacement IV fluids that it wasn’t hospital care 😂 and nothing that I couldn’t handle at home.
like what ?????

Kindly, I doubt this is the case. If your father had not have qualified and had no money, the Local Authority would have had to pick up his care. Im my experience, the ICB (who fund CHC) give zero craps about who will pay, as long as it's not them. So they don't give it to people as they have less money. It is essentially rationed though with a very high bar to get it.

It would help if funding was transparent but it isn't . As @Hayliebells explained, funding is generally given for those who don't have assets, which for many people is owning a house. At the other end of the spectrum, two of the richest families I know had the funds to take the Local Authority to court and challenge them in a lengthy legal battle. The Local Authority backed down. It could not afforded a court battle.
The greater number of people who choose not to work and so don't pay taxes, the less money there is. The news covered bankruptcy last night and how easy it is for those without assets to write off debts of £500,000. Money has to come from somewhere and there are plenty of posters who agree in magic money trees.

I work in Adult Social Care at my local LA.

It's not the case that no one is getting CHC funding anymore. We get about two-three people per week awarded it.

As an LA, our central government funding has been slashed dramatically since 2010. The proportion of funding we get directly from central government is much, much smaller than it used to be, leaving us more reliant on Council tax.

At the same time, we have an aging population with increasingly complex needs. It's not immigrants who are putting pressure on the system. It's Mabel who is British, 93, who thanks to our amazing NHS, has survived numerous health complaints that would have killed her 40 years ago, but have left her unable to manage her personal care. The immigrants are the ones caring for her because British people are reluctant to take on the jobs, in part because it's low paid and partly due to the stigma associated with it.

Mabel has saved all her life, got a nice house when housing costs meant almost anyone could get on the ladder. Who should pay for her care that costs £1000s per year? If we say we want the government to pay for it, then we need to fund Local Authorities properly. And that money inevitably comes from the tax payer.

If the money is to come from the tax payer, then are you all willing to pay more tax to fund it so that Mabel's children can inherit her house? I'm not.

Yes some care homes are making large profits and this needs to be addressed. But that's a drop in the ocean compared to just how much social care is costing the country as a whole. And some homes are going bust because they're having to spend so much money on agency staff that it's not sustainable.

I don't know if this has been said but it relates to how complex your medical needs are or at least that is how the assessment works out. So someone bed bound, unable to walk, needing spoons fed etc but whose needs are stable and predictable and can be managed by a carer (not a nurse) doesn't qualify. But I've seen someone who was fully mobile, capacited, had a volunteering job but also have severe, unpredictable epilepsy did qualify. In their case they had unpredictable seizures that left them unable to breathe which required immediate attention from a a highly trained staff member. But yes, the system is broken. I don't think it should be just about CHC but reviewing whole of social care so CHC doesn't seem like the holy grail.

The CHC system is a joke. Every time you hear about bed blockers, and the fault is social care, think about how social care went from helping people who needed help with everyday activities to live in the community but now is (unlawfully) providing complex healthcare to severely ill and dying people in the community. If there is an investigative journalist out there, find out how many CHC cases get past at the multidisciplinary team meetings but get declined at a ‘quality’ panel. Really difficult to investigate though because the way it is designed means that health professionals can sit around a table and minimise brilliant well managed care until they can get out of paying for it. That probably Kate Garraway’s situation. Provided amazing care. Well managed need is still a need though and someone on a PEG isn’t social care. What a joke.

@SloaneStreetVandal that’s crazy and isn’t the case here thankfully or we would be screwed, we have never pay our package during a hospital admission.

@Wakemeup20
At the time I was assessing this was the criteria in Wiltshire.

There is 2 pots though CHC and social

we get 40 hours from CHC and additional social package of 10 hours from social services - they are 2 Separate things
for example a lot of the children here with packages that have LD / low functioning autism/ mobility / nueo etc are under social care not the CHC.

The system it seems is different here in Scotland, but it's still not great.

The care at home service is 'free' however it's pitifully under staffed and provides only very basic care (essentially just showering/bathing, toileting and heating food). I think the absolute maximum it provides (for free) is 4 x 45 minute visits per day, so a maximum of 3 hours per day. I think you'd have to be severely disabled to get anything like that though, the norm is a 15 minute visit.

Bed blocking is a huge issue in Scotland too, it can take weeks/months to get these 'care' packages in place (an existing care package is cancelled the moment a person is admitted to hospital, even if it's likely to be a short stay, and they're treated as a new applicant).

I do think there's an element of human judgement, and if you can pay, they find a way of making you. Derek could pay, so he did. My FIL was quite wealthy but bed bound in a nursing home, he didn't qualify. My father, who did need nursing care but was definitely not in as great a need as my FIL, did qualify. He didn't have much in the way of savings at all and no property, he was just living on the state pension, so I strongly suspect individual finances play a big part in whether you qualify or not. There's an element of rationing going on that is not officially acknowledged, but it's definitely there. Until social care is actually properly funded, I don't think there's much alternative.

Obviously, workers recruited from overseas need housing, medical care etc but the numbers add another layer of demand.
I feel so sorry for a Labour Government who will be expected to work miracles with empty coffers and greater levels of unemployment than the UK has seen in a long time.

It could happen to any of us at any time. That doesn’t negate the fact that it’s hideously expensive.

At the moment, there is no money around to pay for it. Magic money tree and all that.

I think there’d be more money if we weren’t paying panels of people to avoid paying out for continuing care.

Thing is, good care costs. DF was at home with DM and in a bad way. Regular visits from carers who weren’t allowed to stop/catch him if he fell. Medication DM was reluctant to give him. He was taken into the hospice where he improved no end and they had to discharge him to a care home as he outstayed his allotted time. They had to make a case for continuing care and weren’t sure if he’d get it. And we all knew what would happen if he was moved.

As it was, he took a turn for the worse and stayed put. God bless the hospice and all at it.

Wish we could have that kind of care everywhere, for everyone.

I have a relative who is a Headteacher in a London Primary School. A third of the students at her school have some form of SEND. There isn't the money to properly support them.
I agree about BREXIT. The damage it has done to our society is immeasurable. No more degree educated, English speaking workers from Europe. Instead the Government is recruiting from the rest of the of the world and legally bringing in 600,000 migrant workers who need housing and access to the NHS etc. It is why Hillingdon is overwhelmed. Brexiteers have wrecked so much about the UK.

Well, i live in an area where there is little to no immigration & its exactly the same.
We ve an NHS Parkinsons Nurse who lives in the village, her list of patients is over 1000, she gets to see sometimes just 1 patient in a day due to excessive travelling.

As a country we always go for parties that offer tax cuts, even at the expense of our military defence, let alone public services.

Kate Garraway is a multi millionaire. I don't feel bed that she had to pay for his care when people who cannot afford private healthcare are dying because they can't access NHS treatments

It really does seem this way, and its terrifying. Also I don't understand how people are failing to realise that a strong support system for the disabled is literally enlightened self interest. I seem to be a pretty healthy person. Pretty fit, eat healthy and exercise, never had any serious illnesses, rarely get colds/viruses. Well, a few years ago I was in an accident that resulted in oxygen to my brain being briefly compromised. I was in a coma for a couple of days (apparently, I don't remember any of this) and my family were told that I would probably wake up, but they didn't know what state I'd be in. As it turns out, I was fine. I lost a few days of memory, but that's all. However, it was entirely possible that I could have been a fit and well youngish woman one day, and severely and permanently disabled the next. This could happen to any of us at any time.

If a Local Authority has to pay £1,000,000 per year for one school place for a severely disabled child, there is going to be little in the pot for anything else. The care bills are increasing all the time. Due in part to immigration, Hillingdon's population has gone up in one year by 10% and is set to rise further. School budgets are cut to the bone. There is no money for Early Years support. Every area is affected.
It is an impossible situation for many Local Authorities.

...why? we voted for this, all opposition parties told the electorate that the Tories wouldn't properly fund public services and have no interest in the NHS, we know this because they ran it down pre 1997, they even tried to sell off the NHS.

We also voted for Brexit that robs the NHS of equivalently qualified HCPs instead replacing them with non EU poorly trained and lower English standards.

As much as i/we could blame the Tories for all of this, its not them, its the UK electorate, who consistently vote for any sort of tax cut than properly funded services.

@Wakemeup20 yeah I kind of got the same feeling. I'm Scotland so things are different here.

A patient like Derek would most likely qualify for a full package of care at home which would be 2 carers coming 4 times a day to do meds/am wash/skin integrity/set up PEG feed. If his care needs increased beyond this he would need 24 hour care which would be a care home (around £750 pw) or nursing home if he had nursing needs (around £850pw). People tell me it's more around the £1k pw mark.

£16k pm would surely pay for 2 staff providing 24 hour care in the home.