With dementia on the increase, AIBU to think that many overestimate the amount of inheritance they may receive?

The people who go there stay there until they are no longer violent. I am not sure about the admin details of admission because once people got to that stage I would no longer be involved with them (occupational therapy rehab) I do know that it was NHS funded via continuing NHS care and it was not expected that they would return home

I wonder what a sensible amount to have saved to fund old age care is. Say by 60. How much should you have saved (obviously it depends on pension income etc too), but if we were just talking savings, how much? £250,000, £500,000 a million?

I’m sure it did in both our cases. You do the best you can with what you have at the time - both in terms of time/resources and the enormous amount of energy it takes. Hindsight is 20/20.💐

Attendance allowance doesn’t begin to cover the care needs of someone with complex disability. The fact is that CHC is made available to those with complex needs but the thresholds are so high very few people qualify - and stand alone dementia rarely cuts it.

I'm getting muddled with time. It's nearly 11 years since Mum died; I keep remembering things that I could have done better (particularly given that I was also looking after DH).

I do hope you take comfort from the fact that your mum was in her own bed, @ThreadGuardDog .

I try to tell myself that that made a difference to my mum too.

Local authorities are not responsible for funding continuing health care. It’s provided by the NHS and horribly difficult to secure. Having dementia as a stand alone condition usually won’t qualify for CHC - there has to be complex disability, usually down to multiple conditions, and needing targeted medical care rather than simply personal care needs.

I had the same misgivings myself. Mum was adamant she wanted to be at home and I moved heaven and earth to make that happen. She died a couple of weeks ago, in her own bed, in her sleep and with her family around her. Even despite that, I still beat myself up daily wondering if I could have done better if I’d done things differently.

CHC is NOT covered by the LA. It is an NHS provision and very hard to get agreement for, even for people with dementia

Sounds as though you had a similar experience. The care system is broken but I don’t know what the fix is. I only know that fleecing the elderly and the vulnerable with such expensive and sub standard services has to stop.

I'll be honest - I sometimes find myself wondering whether Mum would have been better in a care home, but she made it clear that she didn't want that.

It’s such a difficult situation isn’t it ? And it’s fraught with guilt too - whatever you do you end up second guessing yourself as to whether it’s right, or enough.

I have health problems myself and to be honest if I hadn’t discovered the lady who became mum’s carer, sadly she would have ended up in a care home. I consider myself very fortunate to have been able to do it, and I appreciate that it’s not something that’s right for everyone. Eight years is a long time in a caring role, especially when you’re not in good health yourself. I do hope you manage to find a solution.

I will add that the contrast to that was the lovely girl who—I discovered—used to sit and eat her lunch alongside my mother, to keep her company and to encourage Mum to eat more.

She cared for Mum while she was still in her own place and then transferred to us. When she told me that she was thinking of applying to university, I encouraged her in spite of the fact that it would mean that we we would lose her.

But yes - it was very hit or miss and some of the things that happened were very upsetting.

I agree that many people are completely naive about the reality of frailty in very old age and the cost of care. And that worry and caring as a family member does not stop if they are in a care home.

@EndlessSeaViews we are in Northamptonshire. In DM's small town there seem to be a number of CHs.

When selecting it my criteria were:

• purpose built, I noticed that the poor CHs tended to be the converted vicarage type. DM was in a wheelchair at the point of entry so needed lifts, level floors, wide corridors and doors.
• 'through care' I was already aware that DM had dementia (dx took another year) so wanted somewhere DM could progress through rather than need to move her.

Her CH isnt perfect but having had a few extended stays in hospital it is a sod of a lot better than that.

I'm sorry that you and your mother experienced that @ThreadGuardDog.

This was our experience with mum when she had care following discharge from hospital. We were told we had four weeks free care, which turned out not to be true. Mum was allocated twenty minutes four times a day distributed as an early morning call at 9am, one at lunchtime, one at 5pm and one at 9pm to put her to bed. In reality the 9am call never happened and I ended up washing and changing her myself as she was distressed. The next call was any time between lunchtime and 3pm, and the 5pm call ended up as her bedtime call because they didn’t have the staff to attend at 9pm. So most days it was two calls out of four.

You never saw the same carers twice and I was baffled when I noticed that they would spend about ten minutes of the allocated time attending to mum and would then sit in the car outside the house for the remaining time. I found out later that they were GPS tracked so it looked as though they were giving the full amount of time to the call when in reality they were sitting in the car drinking coffee.

The last straw was when the care company sent two men to shower and change mum. I’m sorry, I know carers can be male but mum was in her nineties, frail and confused, and needed considerable help to shower. She was visibly shaken when she thought a man was going to shower her. I refused to allow it, cancelled the carers and two weeks later received a bill for over £900. When I queried it I was told she didn’t satisfy the conditions for post discharge free care and when I refused to pay without further clarification, the LA threatened me with bailiffs. I paid up and went private.

I didn’t need to google thanks. Unfortunately was in the position of investigating care homes for my mum before deciding we could do a better job ourselves. And I did post to OP to say I had missed the fact that she was in the south, where prices are higher.

Re: carers at home. We did find that we were let down quite a lot.

While we were still in the process of building on accommodation for Mum, she was living on her own, so I paid for quite a bit of extra care, including 90 minutes 'companionship' time in the evening, all from the same company subcontracted by the council.

I realised that something was off. I admit to driving over to Mum's and watching from the top of the hill. Sure enough, the care being paid to be there for 90 minutes left after 10. Now, I sympathise with the fact that the company was not giving the carers travelling time, and I would have accepted the carer shaving off 10 minutes at either end, but knocking off 80? Nope.

After Mum moved in with me, we had a 7.30 am slot booked. I can't remember the exact length of time now, but the council paid for 15 minutes and I added to it.

I needed this since I had to get ready for work, get my husband up and be on hand in case a carer needed extra help.

Two of the carers in particular were dreadful about timekeeping, causing us substantial problems. In the end, I told the company to send someone else.

I think that’s possibly as a result of sectioning. I have a relative who had deteriorated considerably due to dementia and home carers refused to attend after she attacked them. She was sectioned under the mental health act and transferred to a unit at our local hospital where she was cared for free of charge for the duration of the section. Unfortunately section orders are regularly reviewed and once they are withdrawn the patient has to leave the unit.

They’re not massively higher no. A difference of around £300 per week. And as I said £1300 won’t include dementia.

The big chains such as Richmond Villages, for example, have some care homes in the Midlands and North but their prices are standard nationwide afaik.

We just got some prices around St Helens and they are coming in at £1300+ a week, for the grotty ones.