Fed up of reading threads asking how they can get out of paying care home fees.

Is there some sort of old age insurance policy that you could pay into later on in life? Like life insurance when you have a mortgage.

You could take that out if you needed to pay for care or if not...well that's the risk.

At least then it doesn't eat into everything you've earned and assets you'd rather pass down to your family / children.

I think I googled this out of curiosity a few years ago and there wasn't anything that existed it might be different now.

It’s a joke 🥹

I payed thousands for my husbands care home fees and all he did was lay in the bed without speach or movement and be fed liquids. It is not going to happen to me as I have lots of vodka and paracetamol which will fix it which we have talked about at length. My son is not going through that again .Seriously. Can't wait for Dignity in Dying to become law.

Na, just helped my mum sell her house and take her private pension at 60 so she doesn’t have to give her life savings, that she’s worked all her life for to a care company run for profit. She now lives in a luxury static caravan, with minimal outgoings, holidaying whenever she wants, with plenty of money in the bank. She’s never looked or felt so well. When the time comes, my siblings and I will care for her. She deserves to enjoy her life now.

Sadly, it's not even that simple @LondonJax - as with all things involving this sort of stuff, the "correct box" on the PoA form has to be signed (Section 5 for anyone interested).
The person making the PoA has the choice to either :
Option A - give their attorneys authority to give or refuse consent to life sustaining treatment on their behalf or
Option B - not give their attorneys authority .........

Make sure you tick the right box folks to reflect your wants and make sure you tell folk what you do and don't want.

So presumably you'd be happy for them to be prosecuted for this after your death?

This is true. You can't just pick and expect to be accepted.

I suspect most people would be happy to move in a bigger space if it meant they were going to inherit a house. It's not rocket science.

I only have a one bedroom flat. Because i havent got living proof that ive had sex without contraception!!!!

Exactly. You can go and sit in the finest care home, but you ain’t staying there when your money runs out.

Also I’ve shouted this, but NO YOU DON’T have a free choice on care homes if you’re paying. You have to be accepted. Fine if you’re a little forgetful and frail, but those who are already incontinent, or aggressive or problematic will find their options very limited.

The pil weren’t wealthy. Not at all. But just having a £230k house meant they were deemed “rich enough”.

I thoroughly agree that the social contract has to work properly. If the balance seems to tip in favour of those “taking”, then there will be complaining and unrest.

We had POA, but it still didn’t seem possible to stop treatment once they were in a home - we had all the “no extraordinary measures’ and ‘no life prolonging treatment’ conversations and forms filled in, but still, a crisis would invariably happen at night (with less experienced staff about i suspect.) They would ring an ambulance and once that had happened the quickest way for the paramedics to make it someone else’s problem was to ship them off to A and E, which then would be a day waiting about there, a week or so on the ward, then back to the home always significantly worse than they were before they left. Despite no real treatment going on while they were in hospital.
The other people on the ward became people i recognised - I’d imagine they were there as often as my relative was!

I don’t know what the answer is, but i do know i don't want to end my days like it.

@Nextdoortomeis

Did you just start this thread to be contentious? You haven't been back once, which is strange given you feel so strongly about this topic.

Most people self funding can't pick where they live because they have finite funds. The state pays out a maximum amount. Sure you can top up that amount but when your money runs you would have to leave the home and find a state one, which is not as easy as it sounds.

I think people look at as extortion when you are paying so much, yet the staff wiping bottoms and changing sheets are being paid an absolute pittance!

We spent over 100k on my late DM's care in a residential care home for around 3-4 years before she deteriorated and had to go into a nursing home. This would have been hugely expensive at around £1,000 per week but she obtained 'continuing care' under the NHS which meant it was paid for. (She had multiple conditions, one serious, which resulted in extreme frailty). This was about 2006 (she died in 2016 just a couple of months before her 90th birthday so spent 10 years in care in all.)
Sadly, it seems much harder to obtain continuing care nowadays which seems so unfair for sick people if they are elderly with ongoing multiple conditions, nowhere else in the NHS is there financial assessment on whether someone has the means to pay for their treatment.
If you have MS or motor neurone disease for example and need nursing care, residential or at home, is it chargeable to you?
edited for typo.

The councils can go back as far as they like looking for deprivation of assets, but what can they really do about grandparents downsizing and going on lots of holidays or paying off their family’s student debts and helping them with a house deposit? Those are just normal things that people do when they can.

@CopperWhite They can claim all that money back, is what they can do.

24 hour supervision means its family or a care home. There are no free care homes, someone is always paying. Other residents or taxpayers.

This thread is so depressing. Can we stop assuming that everyone who gets LA funded care “pissed it up the wall” or never worked, or scrounged off the state all their lives?!
Both my parents worked all their lives but neither had well paying jobs and with three children money was tight. They didn’t have money to put aside for their care but they did manage to buy a modest house. They were decent, hardworking people and wonderful caring parents. Both had to go into nursing homes towards the end of their lives, my father first. And because my mum was still living in the family home and they had very little savings, the LA funded his care costs because obviously you can’t kick an old lady out of her home and force her to sell it to pay for her husband’s care home!
Then when my mum declined, the family home had to be sold to pay for her fees. It didn’t last very long at over £1000 a week, and then the LA funding kicked in.
I wish that they’d been sitting on a home in the south east worth over £1 million as a lot of people are, and could have self-funded years of care - but in our area houses aren’t worth anything like that, so I’m very sorry they had to cost the tax payer a bit of money when theirs ran out. However, it was certainly not because they were a couple of feckless layabouts who scrounged off the state all their lives, an assumption on this thread that seems quite common and that I find quite offensive.
People also seem to forget that if you are self-funding then you get a much greater choice of where you spend your final years. You don’t get to choose when the LA is paying. We got given a list from the LA of the nursing homes that had spaces and the right type of care for mum, and we could pick a maximum of three to go and view. ALL of them cost more than the LA could pay and that’s what we could choose from. Didn’t matter whether mum liked them or not, it was “tough shit, this is all we can offer you, take it or leave it”.
My sister was a senior social worker and thank goodness she was, because she had some “inside” knowledge about some of the homes on the list, and there were some that she said she’d never put Mum in.
Nobody should be made to live somewhere where they’re not happy, or not treated well in the last years of their lives, and if you can afford to self-fund then you’re very lucky that you’ll never have to.
So all in all, having the state pay for your fees isn’t some sort of fantastic reward that scroungers get at the end of their lives, that some people on this thread seem to think it is.

I hope, if it comes to it, my parents sell
their house and get themselves a nice care home and see out their final years as comfortably as possible

It’s a really tricky one but how can the state indefinitely pay for care with the population ageing? I can see both sides. A parent has just gone into a home which is £2,500 per week. It’s going to tear through their savings. They lived frugally and carefully their whole life and retired at 70 (in a home a decade later) but at least it is going on their care which should be bloody good at that price!

I did @Wingedharpy - but didn't know I could do that. I assumed it was more for the 'she needs treatment' rather than the 'withhold it'. Just shows you don't always know as much as you think you do! Thank you for that. It may come in useful for someone else.

What baffles me is the amount of people that seem to think paying through the nose for fees = better care.
In my 20plus years working in care and now as a LA inspector I can, hand on heart, tell you it has very little to do with it. I have been to countless top range homes and the staff have been very close to criminal in their neglect.
Some establishments know how to glitter a steaming pile shal we say.

Why extortion?

As long as people feel they don’t get justice from society, those that can will always seek ways to minimise what the government can take when they die or need care. If people didn’t have to watch while those they love suffer on NHS waiting lists, or struggle to find a decent job, and their children could get the education they deserve etc, then they would be willing to pay into the system. The biggest kicker is that being self funding doesn’t guarantee better can and it means paying for other people. It’s madness to expect people to want to be part of that system.

The councils can go back as far as they like looking for deprivation of assets, but what can they really do about grandparents downsizing and going on lots of holidays or paying off their family’s student debts and helping them with a house deposit? Those are just normal things that people do when they can.

My fit and healthy uncle decided to stop working when he was 30. He's 65 now. He just didn't want to work.

He has managed to stay on a mixture of the dole and sick for the last 35 years. He mixes with other long term unemployed to learn about every trick in book to get what he can.

He managed his money. Read the papers for free at the library. Used free internet at library and got as many concessions as he could for swimming and yoga. He was lazy just didn't want to work. He would put on an Oscar winning performance when he was assessed for sick pay.

He used the dental hospital for free dental care a she didn't work he didn't mind waiting for hours and multiple trips so he has great teeth.

He was lucky in that he inherited council tenancy in nice area.

He has now been moved to a bungalow by the council . They paid and arranged his move. Gave him money for paint etc.

If he residential care he will get this for free as he has no assets.

There are thousands like him. Many in the Borough I live in.

I agree that you should pay for your own care however to find yourself in the same home as someone who has never worked all their life (willingly) getting everything for free hits hard. It's not equitable but I don't know the solution