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

[Nextdoortomeis]

As per the title.
I'm sure lots of people would like the state to pay care home fees.
But we don't live in a fair world.
Both mum and mil paid nearly £70k in fees
yes I didn't want to pay but I also wanted them to get the best care in their later years.

You or your sister alone would never be able to look after your mum in the advanced stages of dementia though. It’s all good and well saying you would never see her go into a home but there comes a point where you are living the reality of it and you will soon find that a setting which provides 24 hour care is needed.

when people say they don’t want to see their relatives go into a home what they really mean is they don’t want their relatives to suffer the horrific circumstances illness that is dementia and end up needing a home. One person alone could never manage the needs of a late stage dementia patient and you will be banging on the doors of a care home to take her when it comes to it.

Also very well said.

Also, thanks for your work. My mother currently has three carer visits a day and it has made all the difference to her quality of life. It's not work I could do and I am so grateful to those who can do it, and do it well.

Social care costs are already in excess of 50% of total council budgets in many areas. The more ppl looking to ‘the state’ to fund their care are in reality looking to already financially screwed local authorities.

the money available to local authorities has shrunk by around 40% but with an ageing and ill population, social care costs are rising and rising

what became known as as the Barnet graph of doom published over 12 years ago when Osborne’s austerity plans were unveiled showed that if nothing changed councils would be unable to provide any services except adult social care and children's services. No libraries, no parks, no road repairs, no bin collections nothing

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/28/barnet-councils-graph-of-doom-now-looks-prophetic

@Blackbookofsmiles1 You seem to have a problem with reading comprehension, so let me explain for you.

@CopperWhite (who I originally replied to) didn't specify a situation i.e. healthy 50 year old Jane gifts her daughter £20K towards uni fees. We all know that wouldn't be classed as deprivation of assets.

They said:

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.

I said (twice) that the local authorities can - emphasis on the can - claim back the money. I didn't say will claim back the money. Because they're allowed to if they can prove there's been a deliberate deprivation of assets.

This has clearly pressed your buttons. I don't know why - maybe there's a chunky-sized inheritance potentially coming your way?

I can’t see how your plan is possible with some diseases. One person would literally crack up and collapse doing 24/7 care. It’s sometimes impossible to keep your loved one safe either in their home or your home.

Those saying they would never put their parents in a home are naive.
I’m a registered nurse with lots of nurse friends willing and able to help, as well as a very supportive parent. I couldn’t have kept my FIL with dementia safe (he was a wanderer) and my own mother was immobile. Even with all the aids in the world I couldn’t have done it. Houses are not designed for it. I’d have willingly looked after both if it had been possible.
Both paid for care.

MIL (now in a home with dementia and many other conditions) swore she would never go into a home. DH and brother, no doubt with a little view to inheritance etc, said the same. Carers were engaged... 4 times a day.

Her condition worsened, and worsened... she had no quality of life. None. Her skin was breaking down as being left in soiled incontinence wear between care visits is going to do that over months/years. She wouldn't eat if not hungry at care visit time, but couldn't be left with anything other than thick protein drinks due to choking hazard... she was also an hour away from family and wouldn't move from her "family home with all the memories " - that is now being sold to provide her with the care she needs anyhow.

She is in a care home now and is happy. More people visit her more often as she won't ask them to help change her, and the room smells fresh. She eats fresh food every meal and is so delighted when the cake trolley comes round every afternoon.

You don't realise how things have slipped downhill until a major change like going into a home happens. You really don't.

I get that, BeyondMyWits. Dementia is a whole different ball game. I am glad your poor mother in law is now secure and well cared for.

Absolutely. I already posted about my own parents who have savings and their own home. They diligently put money into ISAs, etc, did all the right things, but if they both need that level of care, I estimate even with the sale of the house (like your parents, mine don't live in an area where their house is now worth the big money) they'll have 4 years max of self-funding before it runs out.

Good luck with anyone thinking that the authorities won't be bothered going after them for deprivation of assets.

An acquaintance of mine served a jail term and lost their very well paid job after hiding the assets of their parent.

It's really not worth it.

I agree with this, it’s good to hear your DM is well cared for and as happy as she can be. The cake trolley sounds really good!

I wonder what the risks are for dementia if you live alone as opposed to those who have lived at least their adult lives in multi generational households

I know that the average lifespan of someone who was born in the early part of the1900’s was much shorter (even without 2 World Wars) But with having more multi generational households or having family living close by and seeing and speaking to family, shop keepers, (no supermarkets and serve yourself shops, you had to ask for everything) and even friends tended to live in the same street/village/town etc there just didn’t seem the prevalence of people getting Dementia/Alzheimers

Even with those who lived into their 80s or 90s they might have been a bit slow physically, but there was nothing wrong with their brain.

I wonder with the advent of supermarkets, and the sheer number of people who move away from family for work which I would say started in the 1980’s Something has been lost that kept people’s brains working

We now just assume that dementia will happen to someone we know. Where in the past it was something that only happened occasionally and usually to a certain type of person who kept themselves to themselves

I strongly believe susceptibility to dementia is genetic. It’s endemic in my mum’s family, unheard of in my dad’s.

Thank you for what you do. I hope you saw my comment that I'd mind less our family paying 5k per month if the carers actually saw that money (and it went into home improvements, training etc)?

I'm totally at peace with the fact my relative's money will now go on care fees, but I would like the carers to be much better paid and it should be not for profit. I am not ok with those fees being siphoned up by private equity firms. It's a bloody difficult job and should be rewarded as such and the younger staff need decent training in conditions like dementia and to be rewarded as the professionals they are. I'd like anyone to try dealing with a sundowning large male dementia sufferer then tell me it's a job that should be min wage.

In the bad home my relative was in the staff turnover was horrendous and none of them seemed to know about things management had told us. I note the parent company made a big profit. Some of the carers from there now work in the good home my relative is now in.

Also take on board what you say about working hard. For various reasons I now do a close to min wage job (mainly due to its flexibility given I have caring responsibilities) after doing a 'professional' public sector job previously and it's far, far harder, more soul destroying work and less forgiving than my cushy public sector professional job. Just because people have money does not mean they've worked harder. In fact, most min wage jobs are probably far more unpleasant and harder work than many highly paid jobs.

I will put my hands up and say I do not think I could be a carer. Granted, dealing with my relative with dementia was partly difficult due to the emotional aspect (it's so hard seeing someone you knew change personality so much), but despite reading loads of advice about how to deal with sundowning I still couldn't do it. It takes a great deal of patience and both physical and emotional resilience and not everyone can do it.

And the Governmment’s unforgivable response was to remove central government funding for councils, knowing that many of them would become insolvent in the next few years.

We’re at that point now. Social Services need to be funded by central government. There is no other way.

I totally agree with you. Nasty, right wing BS. it must be the working poor's fault that they are poor. This is the criticism from the same greedy and selfish people who are deliberately trying to spend or put their assets into trust to avoid paying for their own expenditure. It's sickening but many seem to find it acceptable, judging by some of the threads and comments on here.

Totally agree. My family have a genetic propensity towards breast cancer, my DH family, heart valve issues (his dads side) and coeliac and dementia (his mums side).

Don't know any of my family with dementia. Currently MIL, her sister and niece are all suffering. Her mum and aunt also had it.

With dementia, though, the care needed is usually mostly non medical - help with washing, dressing, ‘toileting’ as they like to call it - maybe eating and drinking. Plus someone there to reassure when the person is anxious/confused/frightened of something they can’t even name.

None of which needs doctors, nurses, or any degree,just care workers who we hope will be kind and sympathetic.

I agree. I have no children and selling my home is part of my plan for my future care, but going by the logic of some here I should just liquidate and spend all my money on cruises otherwise I’ll be subsidising the care of those feckless non self funders.

In other words by being equally “feckless”.

You seem to be generalising from your own experience, which may not be representative. It certainly isn't representative of my extended family. My great-grandmother, born around 1880, had dementia for several years before dying at 92. I can't remember if she was in a nursing home at the end but before that her daughters took it in turn to have her living with them and it took a tremendous toll on all of them. That was in the early 1970s.

I can remember this being talked about when I was a child. It was unusual to have such an elderly relative and also to have a family member with dementia, but it was far from unknown.

I am no expert on this area, but I would guess that the reason there's so much more dementia now is simply because it is (mostly) a disease of old age and most people didn't live long enough to suffer from it until recently. As has been mentioned before on this very long thread, people used to die long before they reached 80 from cancer, heart disease, diabetes and all sorts of other illnesses that are now treatable, childhood illnesses that are now prevented by vaccination and public health measures, in accidents or in wars. Frankly, in many cases, they were lucky not to live to extreme old age with poor quality of life.

There are around 450,000 care home places in the UK with half of the places publicly funded. The turnover of patients is relatively rapid as the average stay is about 2.5 years. It's no more than 1 in 5 of us who will ever need a care home & only half of us will self-fund which means that only 10% of people will ever need to pay care home fees.

Bottom line is that 90% of people will never need to pay care home fees but it can be very expensive for the 10% who do. The obvious answer is to pool risk just as we do with the health service. We all pay taxes then if we need it medical care is free at point of delivery. Providing social care on the same basis is easily affordable.

I wonder if those figures will change now there is more need, younger generations (I mean people in their 50s and 60s now) do not have a prejudice against care homes and, indeed, are willing to accept them and cannot or will not do the care themselves (me included). More people will use them so I can’t see it staying as 90% not needing care homes

But if only one person in a couple needs a care home, that’s still likely to result in the loss of the family home. Both of my grandmothers had dementia and neither of my parents inherited more than a low four-figure sum as a result. So, I’d estimate that 20% of families will end up in this situation.

I completely agree that we should pool the risk the same way we do with healthcare.

If only 10% of people will need to self-fund I'm not sure how that translates to something that will affect 20% of families.