To think it's unfair to sell your home to fund care when older while others pay nothing.

[SonnyHoney]

I provide healthcare services to older people, which means I regularly visit care homes. It’s something I find quite upsetting at times. I see individuals who have worked hard all their lives, paid off their mortgages, and are now facing care home fees of around £2,000 a week.

Meanwhile, others are living in the same care homes with their costs largely covered, aside from a contribution from their pension.

I say this as someone from a working-class background and daughter of an immigrant (El salvador) who has had to work incredibly hard to get to where I am financially. I’m also very aware that one day my own parents may have to sell their home to fund their care.
My mum, for example, has run a cleaning business for years, she’s up early every morning and has worked long, physically demanding hours. She hopes to pass something on, but realistically, I feel it will likely be used to cover care costs .

Before anyone says “Why don’t you just care for her yourself and keep the house?” And of course, if I’m in a position to do that, I will. But the reality is that with older age, there can come a point where needs become too complex, and care at home is no longer possible.

Obviously, those who don't have houses to sell need care and have to go to a care home, but my point is it just feels unfair, really.

Totally agree that it’s unfair. Someone that scrimped and saved will end up funding their own care whereas someone who didn’t prepare financially gets it paid for them. The only advantage to being someone with savings is opportunity of choice.

I think it should move to a two tier system similar to healthcare, dentistry & schooling where there is a basic but fit for purpose option which is available universally, and then a private option for those who wish to pay for better.

if you have assets you have choices, if you don’t you are at the mercy of your council social services dept which will not pay for residential care or domiciliary care until absolutely necessary then the bare minimum resulting in people being moved more, poor care etc.

But most homes have council and self funded.

The self funded also pay move to cover the council short fall.

I understand your point, and I’m not suggesting that people shouldn’t contribute towards their own care where they can. Of course the system has to be funded somehow.
My point is more about how it feels in practice when you see it day to day. Two people can end up in the same care home, receiving the same level of care, but one is paying substantial amounts purely because they happened to own a home, while the other isn’t.

They cant really downsize, They live in a small terraced house in the a village that in lincolnshire. They don't have extra rooms and an office.

I don't have an answer, just a frontline perspective .

I don't think it's fair that some people get huge inheritances just through the luck of their birth and through no hard work of their own, so I don't think it's unfair at all that people who have the means should pay for their own care, rather than expecting tax payers to cover the costs.

Further to my comment above I actually think it’s pretty rare where both members of a couple move into a care home at the same time. So someone nearly always loses out if they own their own home.

I agree it’s a very unfair system, why should the exact same care either cost thousands or nothing depending on choices made years and years previously

I understand it feels unfair. My parents are currently late 80s, still in their own home but it is clear that they are likely to need to go into care at some point, and their home will be sold.

Whilst I'd love to simply dump them on 'the state' and cash in their home and keep the money, this hardly feels fair either. My parents will have the money (through the sale of their home) to fund care for a certain number of years and that is how it needs to work.

We can't simply expect working people's taxes to pay for everything. People who couldn't afford to buy homes will need looking after - and presumably funding. People who did buy homes and have savings will need to pay for their own care for as long as they can.

Why do people see ‘scrimping and saving’ as some sort of morally superior trait? Miserable.

You only get a choice if there is space in your home of choice.
These threads always bring up "well I'm paying for my care so I'll get a choice" but the reality is if your chosen home cannot accommodate your needs or they do not have space and you have to go where they can accommodate your needs and where there is space.

Our personal situation was about 3 homes in the local area that were very nice but couldn't accommodate the needs. Nearest one who could accommodate our relative was 40 minute drive. We are not rural there are plenty of care homes. None with the space or the correct staffing
Paying does not give you a choice

YANBU. This vexed my FIL. He knew that he would have to pay for a care home when friends who had spent all of their money on cruises and golf holidays wouldn’t.

When the time came, we found that there was only a little difference in price between care homes that had residents funded by the council and those that didn’t. But the quality was massive. Basically those self funded in a care home with council residents were subsidising them.

We don't charge for the NHS, so why we charge those unlucky enough to need health and social care is a mystery to me.

It's because successive governments have failed to put anything in place to deal with the costs, even though they knew forty years ago that there was going to be a bulge of people needing care. They could have started building up funds and resources from that point - a ring fenced element of NI, for example, investment in suitable land packages, bursary incentives for higher level trained care workers.

But, they didn't. Instead they actually sold off the facilities they had and allowed private companies to take over provision. They allowed then working people to have their pensions subsumed in the heady merger and acquisitions free for all that happened at the millennium so they were unlikely to be able to build up sufficient money to fund themselves. Further, they did nothing and still continue to do nothing about how the big care companies run homes at a nominal loss, due to accounting machinations with other commercial interests they have, so they're not even paying the right amount of business tax.

It's all bent as fuck and other residents are absolutely not culpable for the monumental fuck up that is care provision in the UK.

Local authorities can and do go a lot further back than seven years. Deprivation of assets doesn't have a cut off. If they think assets have been dispersed to avoid care fees, many are keen to pursue this because otherwise they end up paying for it, which they can't afford.

But it was their choice to "scrimp & save" to own something and have savings or whatever it is.
And owning a home & having the protection of savings offers security during a person's lifetime which those on low salaries don't have - they are beholden to Landlords who raise rents and may evict them if they decide to sell & have to resort to debt if they have a high bill/sudden expense.

It's fair to then have to use these assets to fund care later in life.
If people don't want to do that then they can take steps to pass wealth on earlier by downsizing & gifting money to children/grandchildren on a regular basis.

Or sign properties over to avoid care costs/inheritance tax.

MIL and FIL both have mixed dementia. MIL is aggressive and tried to kill someone so she under DOLS in a dementia care home. Everything they have worked for is paying for their care - £2,200 a week for MIL. I agree she should pay something but not everything she has saved throughout her life. She has been there 18 months so is rapidly burning through her funds. She would hate to think that she will not leave anything to her grandchildren but that is another story and something that should have been arranged/discussed a long time ago. However we are using their money to provide the best care in awful circumstances. Oh and their is a possibility that when she is low on funds they will kick her out which is crazy when you think others are not paying. We will fight this tooth and nail.

Its made us think about how we can help our children in the future and when to downsize and then help our children financially.

As a society we function because some people earn less and may never be able to buy a home. There are also people, like my mum, who through divorce, disability or other major life events have lost their home.

If you've ever sat in despair as the Council refuse to provide safe care (for example ensuring my mother with dementia and severe allergies has food bought and prepared by people who check allergens, or baths prepared by people who check the water temperature) or walked in to find your parent nearly dead (I am not exaggerating) because there was a 6 month wait for assessment of care needs and the interim care failed to check she had in date food, you would know this is not like for like. My father's house went to his care, but his final year was so much better.

I would rather take the burden of my care off my children and have them know I could have high quality care than leave them money.

Anyone who pays council tax is paying for those in care homes who aren't paying for themselves. The vast majority of CT goes on social care (part childrens services but a lot on elderly care). So people who have to sell their home are effectively being charged twice.

I don't own a home, I'm in SH so if I need care, I won't be paying. So it doesn't affect me if others have to pay. But I still think it's unfair. The threshold of what can be kept is really low and the cost of care homes is crazy high. It's a scam imo.

YANBU, you work your whole life and made something of yourself and then the gov will see you leave nothing to your kids.

Yet others who've been on benefits their whole life in their little council house, get care for free.

Wealthier people have longer life expectancy. Many working class people work all their lives and get no pension or care costs because they’ve already died. One of the reasons I’m glad I managed to buy a house is so that I’ll have an asset to sell to pay towards care if I need it. In the mean time, I’d rather my taxes pay towards poor people’s care homes than rich people’s inheritance.

I don't like this 'worked hard all their lives' nonsense. Do people who can afford to pay work any harder than those that can't afford to pay? Does the CEO work any harder than a bin man?
Money gives you choices, the right to choose your care home. It's also your new 'home', you don't live in your old home - you have a new one.

I’m in the middle of this at the moment. My Mum has been in a care home for over 5 years self funding. She was in need of complex care and we were spending £6000 a month on carers coming in to her home. We got to a crisis point and she agreed to have a week in a nice care home. Well she loved it, she felt safer, it was like being in a 5* hotel with fantastic care. If I’m honest I didn’t think she had much time left so I wanted her to have the best care possible. At that point the care home was £6500 per month. Over the subsequent years the price rose to an eye watering £9000 per month. Last year I made the difficult decision to move her to a different care home, still nice but not the same. I’m now in contact with the council to help with the fees and it isn’t pleasant. I don’t begrudge paying the fees but they want me personally to contribute now and I just can’t/wont, I need to put my children and my family first.

In retrospect I should have picked a cheaper care home, but even the dr’s didn’t think she had long left! I don’t honestly know what will happen next. The current home has just raised its fees by 10% and I can’t imagine the council are going to fund that!

I’ve been thinking about this recently because my mum is aging. We were discussing her selling her house and coming to live with us. Our house isn’t big enough for this so we would also have to sell our house and buy a bigger one, hopefully with an annex or something similar that she could live in. However the more I looked into this, I realised that if she later had to go into a care home there was a risk they could come after my house.
I’m now a bit stuck because I’d like her to come and live with me, but I can’t afford to do it without the money from her house . But I don’t think we can use the money from her house because of the care home thing.

Yeah I agree, I think it's ridiculous. But then so much of this country is the same, don't work, then get it for free! I just try not to think about any of it too much as it's depressing.

Many of the residents now funded by the local authority will already have used their assets.
A few years of care will rattle through quite a large estate.
My FIL is now authority funded as his assets gone below the threshold.

Every care home I've been in (as an inspector), people have at least 2 choices for each meal with additional offerings if they want different things.

Best to own it as tenants in common rather than joint tenants. They the house can’t be sold out from under the remaining spouse.