Funding care

[MrsWobble3]

Does anyone have real life experience of what happens when money runs out? My MIL has dementia and is cared for at home with 24 hour live in carers. As you may imagine this is very expensive and she will run out of money to pay for it (without selling her house) within the next 3 years. What happens at this point? BIL thinks that the council steps in and pays for the care, so she can stay there as long as she wants without having to sell her house or make any changes. This sounds too good to be true - is he right? And if he is, what happens about all the other non-care costs such as groceries, utilities etc. She has no income other than a state pension once her assets have been used to pay for care for the next few years. Will she have to fund those out of her pension? And what happens if it's insufficient for her to continue as she is now with a cleaner and gardener etc?

If anyone has experience of this situation I'd really like to hear it as I'm worried that BIL thinks it will all be fine so sees no need to think about it whereas I can see a massive problem if she is not going to get state funding to continue her life as it is.

Thank you findingmyway. This is all such a battle isn't it. And it's made so much harder by the lack of certainty. We have just gone through all MIL's finances and think that MIL currently has several years of self funding ahead of her so our current plan is to make sure we move her into a home with sufficient time for the council to then continue funding when her money runs out. This avoids what we think is the worst case scenario of a forced move into an unsuitable home.

We are not trying to preserve any inheritance - we all accept that's gone - but want to know she can live out her days somewhere she feels calm and comfortable.

Completely agree re it being a battle and re inheritance. Unfortunately my MIL Is in her mid 80s and desperate to stay in her own home which is why we're going down that route. Also because we have been lucky to find an amazing live in carer that has helped her so much - there is a marked change in her although she remains very dependent with a number of needs.

There's a lot of misinformation (wrong!) on this thread. OP please don't be poorly advised by taking any of the above as read. Some well meaning PPs have over generalised too far from a specific individual assessment /situation or even misunderstood (which is easy done as usually happens at fraught time).

Best to ring her local ASD and seek advice. You can ask for a reassessment of her individual needs under The Care Act (2014), even if self funding, (because options change including new developments in field of telecare equipment/support and local community support and needs change too). Then her SW can best advise you of options to help you plan for future, based in her individual needs at this point.

Just for information - CHC is national framework criteria and available to general public. It can be found by googling HMGOV CHC

Here's the link anyway...

www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-framework-for-nhs-continuing-healthcare-and-nhs-funded-nursing-care