What happens to elderly people in care homes when their assets reduce below £25k

[heavelyz]

Hi, my elderly mother needs increasing care. Though I'd love to provide this myself and despite the fact she loves me, she doesn't want me to do this. So, I'm trying to understand options and looking for advice from anyone who's been through this very difficult time.

Specifically, my understanding is that £25k is the assets/ savings threshold below which the UK state will support elderly care (please correct me if wrong).

What, if anything, happens to the person already in an elderly care home when, by paying for the care home, their assets reduce below £25k?

E.g.
Can the state move them to cheaper accommodation?
Is the state obliged to keep them in the existing care home?

The state can move them to cheaper accommodation. The limit is a bit over £23k but that's only a few days difference in care home bills.

The care home my mother was in said that if her private self-funding dried up, they would offer her a shared room at the cost the Council was prepared to pay. Luckily it didn't come to that, but we would have had to decide whether to keep her where she was settled and knew the staff, but in a shared room, or move her to another less luxurious home that the LA would pay for.

The local authority isn't obliged to keep the person in the current care home if they can find a cheaper placement which meets their needs. But it is possible the current care home may agree to keep the person on at a lower rate.

My mother's self-funding will fall below the threshold next year, and the local authority could move her to a cheaper care home. However when I spoke to the manager of her care home, she said we would very likely be able to come to an agreement whereby my mother would be able stay at LA rates, although she'd have to move to a cheaper smaller room.

It's worth bringing up the subject now with the manager to see what she says.

My aunt was in this position. Her care home agreed to keep her but LA rates were too low and they wanted £80 pcm 'top up' contribution from her family.

My aunt never married and had no children so they were effectively asking me for the £80 .

Fortunately my aunt was ex forces and I managed to find a charity who would pay the top up, otherwise I have no idea what would have happened.

I work for a not for profit care home provider. You'll probably find most care homes will want evidence of her ability to pay for a couple of years before accepting her as a private payer, as they try to avoid situations like someone running out of money. That said, my organisation will never force someone out of their home once they're with us, we have bursaries for exactly this sort of situation but we don't shout about it much as our funds to do this are limited. I doubt a 'for-profit' home would necessarily respond the same way though.