Person going into care home thinks they have avoided selling their house to pay fees?

There isn't

But they won't go back the whole lifetime, way pre illness.

Otherwise no parent could ever gift money for a child's house deposit, for example

It's scarey isn't it. Mum had mice in the kitchen. We discovered it when I went to see her with my DS who doesn't live in the UK. We spent all afternoon cleaning her kitchen cupboards. The next day I phoned and she'd forgotten all about it and didn't understand why I'd arranged a pest controller as she didn't have mice.

https://lottie.org/care-guides/the-number-of-uk-care-home-residents/

Found this useful link

So, with so many care home residents, how many people does it take to look after them all? The number of care home staff in the UK is almost 700,000 people!

That makes the care home resident to staff ratio roughly seven staff members for every five residents.

I know this will include admin staff etc - but wow, this is a high ratio and explains a lot about costs

Not if they don't need care for another 10-20 years

Otherwise no one could ever gift a large sum of money at any point in their lives without it being deemed deprivation of assets

I'm not sure that there is a limit on how far back they can look.

Staff need to be there even when asleep. In case of falls, residents needing help to the loo etc.

Not if they don't need care for another 10-20 years

Otherwise no one could ever gift a large sum of money at any point in their lives without it being deemed deprivation of assets

That's extortion!!! £10.41 per hour when half of those hours they spend asleep!

Near us, there's a wonderful care home which is like a little indoor village. Each resident has their own 'cottage' with American style porch & mini garden, there's a Main Street, a pub, hairdressers, 3 restaurants, a bakery, a corner shop, coffee shop/cafè, dress shop, community centre with bingo and other activities and then in the middle, are some 'gardens' with real trees & grass - all of it is indoors. Then there's an outside wraparound patio & gardens. Everything in the village is completely free and the fees for that place - which is known as the elite care home in the entire county - are £1100 per week.

You can’t do it! It will be seen as deprivation of assets

My dad’s trigger for going into a home was repeated falls. He would fall at 3am, my mum would call the neighbours at 6am to get him up. It couldn’t go on. Yes, they had a pendant falls service but all it does is call an ambulance for you and monitor progress of the ambulance. NHS ambulances are massively overstretched and an elderly person on the floor, largely unharmed if bewildered, isn’t a priority.

they were still managing in the day with care visits to wash and shave dad, so probably wouldn’t have been ill enough for LA funding. But the situation was unsustainable

@EmmaGrundyForPM she stayed in her house for as long as physically possible. She's not far off 100. She is physically frail but mentally 100%. She had been in and out of hospital for v short stays, and discharged via another care home, then to home. The last time it happened, she transferred to a better care home at her own expense. This all took place over a few months. Prior to that she had been fine to look after herself at home.

She made a very sensible decision.

@countrygirl99 , very true.
It was still fairly early on in her Alzheimer’s - TBH I was still trying to kid myself that it was just old-age forgetfulness - when my DM, who’d always been very clued up about finances, phoned her bank about something.

And could not remember, literally the instant she’d put the phone down, what they’d said.
That was when the dreaded penny dropped.
The other sign that day, was that while she’d normally have been in a terrible tizz about such a thing, she was quite unconcerned - because she’d forgotten almost immediately that it had happened at all.

I used to work in LA brokerage by the way and the LA use all the same xare homes that are privately available, just where we could find a place.The LA of course negotiate a much better price and often the family just pay a small top up

If your partner still lives in the home it is safe.we have just had thus,with my parents and they could not come after tge house

https://chpi.org.uk/blog/the-hidden-profits-behind-collapsing-care-homes/

Why their debt is really just debt to another company they actually own.

Feel free to continue to imagine that with more money you get to buy better care. In fact you just get screwed over either way but it costs you more.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2022/jul/24/uk-private-care-providers-profit-rise-covid-report

All these poor care home owners

Homes have to be heated to a higher level than most domestic homes so heating bills are very high. They need specialist equipment, hoists, specialist beds and mattresses. Laundry bills are high. As well as care staff there will be catering and cleaning staff and admin staff to sort payroll and rotas, pay the bills, deal with enquiries, communicate with families, GPs etc. Then there are activities which need materials/staff.

@NotImpressedByYourBragging , what is so often not mentioned in this context, is that it is something of a ‘luxury’ to be able to self fund. It means that you are not at the mercy of almost invariably hard-pressed social services, who will typically wait until family doing their best to care are on their knees with stress and exhaustion (I’m particularly talking dementia here) before they’ll even consider funding a care home place. Hardly surprising, when you consider the cost.

I say this as someone whose DM and FiL, both with dementia, were self funded. TBH we were very thankful both times, to be able to choose the time and place ourselves.

A lot of care homes have massive maintenance and running costs because they’re housed in buildings that aren’t fit for purpose. Many of those are struggling to meet modern compliance regulations. I should think the purpose built ones are more cost efficient to run but they won’t be charging any less. Lots of profit to be made there.

Caring has always been seen as unskilled work, it requires compassion, patience, a sense of humour and some physical strength. Those attributes aren’t valued, sadly.

If these care homes aren't doing it for big profits where are they spending the money on? A care home bed capacity is around 30 rooms on average in my area.

Carers min wage. A nurse on shift, gas, electricity and food insurance.

Why are the carers so badly paid? Considering without them there is no care home or service to be offered. Bizzare we are all fretting on funding but the very core to providing this we seem happy with how it is.

Completely agree with you @MereDintofPandiculation. If anyone suggested that we should stop trying to save very sick babies even though they may face a lifetime of health issues and have complex and resource intensive care needs, people would be horrified. And yet it’s ok for someone nearing the end of their life to be allowed to suffer discomfort and indignity because it’s deemed too expensive to meet those needs for the limited time they exist.

@SequentialAnalyst the fact is that many self-funders move into residential care before they need to. There are other options such as Extra Care which may be far more suitable. I think residential care for someone who is cognitively fine should be a last resort.

LAs don't have the money to fund care home placements just because someone likes the idea of a care home. There has to be an assessment process with clear eligibility criteria.

One of the problems is that the alternatives to residential care aren't really known about in the general public. GPs don't know about the alternatives so often suggest a care home when they are really not suitable for a lot of people.

Well, we do. Look at the funding of care homes. Look at treatment of people who don’t “need” a care home, for whom it is regarded that living in one room with a commode is an adequate quality of life. What is that if not being put on the scrapheap?

That's not the reality for the majority of people. Yes, the late Queen was awesome in her 90s but as you say, it's about the brain keeping up with the body. My mother at 87 is just a shadow of what she was, physically fantastic but the cognitive decline is torture to watch. I think it's wonderful if a 90 year old can stay in their own home and continue to enjoy life, but I can say I'd rather be six foot under than endure dementia.

My Mum has an asset - her home which we are selling - that could pay for her care until she dies unless she surprises everyone and outlives her funds (approx 3 years). Having funded her own care for 4 years and apparently contributed to others less fortunate, would the LA then move her out of this home whilst others who didn't have the means would continue to be funded by LA and other residents with more money? That seems incredibly unfair.

It is a very unfair system. At her age it’s unlikely she would be moved, more likely a deal would be done with the care home by her social worker so that she could stay at the reduced LA rate. The care home would essentially take the hit on the deficit. If she were younger and likely to live longer it might be different.