Funding care home

[FloMoJo]

So, dad is just about managing but things are getting harder due to mobility. Also worried about his mood since we lost mum. He’s fallen a few times and lives on microwave food and air fry sausages.

He won’t get a cleaner or care support as he says it is too expensive - and he had had five cleaners over the last couple years ‘but they were no good’. He wants me and my sister to do it all - she helps every six weeks or so for a weekend as she lives further. I am on my own, single parent working two jobs and can’t commit to anything regular - 75 mins away.

He has equity release and probably about 60k left if sold now. He’s on small amount of pension credit and Attendance Allowance. I haven’t started researching properly yet but think it would be so much easier and he would have more company if he were in a residential place near me. A quick google is telling me fees are up to 1200 is a week - what would happen once his money runs out? Is it easy to get funding? Any experiences welcome. Thanks

That entirely depends on his care needs. It doesn't sound as if he's anywhere near the threshold for council funding of residential care at the moment.

When going from self funding to being paid for , the elderly persons place in the care home is not guaranteed .
It could be deemed that another cheaper home would meet his needs and they could move him there . It doesn't always happen but could .

Fees could be way higher than £1200 - could be £2k plus.

Would sheltered housing be better than a nursing home? It sounds like isolation and lack of stimulation are the biggest bugbears here, not the personal or nursing care aspect.

Sheltered housing would probably be the best option if there is anything affordable near either you or your sister. As pp said, he isn't anywhere near the threshold for a residential home, which means no funding once his money runs out.
However, he would have to agree, which is going to be your biggest challenge,

Sorry, do you mean your father's current property would only give him £60,000 if he sold now?

That's tricky if so. It doesn't leave many options. What IS it with elderly people just expecting their adult children to sort everything out for them? Absolutely infuriating.

If he has mental capacity he's allowed to make his own decisions bt he is absolutely not entitled to make you and your sister act as unpaid cleaners and carers to save him money. You can and should enforce reasonable boundaries for what you can do and use your available energy where it's most beneficial. It's much more sensible for the cleaning and practical tasks to be managed by paid services so that your visits can be sociabie rather than drudgery. You and your sister need to say no to the demands that are too much.

If he doesn't need nursing care or dementia support then he doesn't need the expensive kind of care home but more a sheltered living kind of setup. This could be a flat with own cooking facilities but also communal facilities on-site so he'd be able to get a decent meal without having to cook, and access to a support worker who would help keep track of whether he's managing and whether he needs more help.

We rented a flat in a retirement block for my mum when she reached that point.

Company if she wanted it, her own space when she didn't.

I had control of her finances- which helped as she would have been horrid at the cost (

Thank you all - it’s really difficult when he does need a lot of support and is housebound but doesn’t want paid support. The guilt trips are hard….
Ive put my boundaries in place but it’s not being received well and my sister - who historically has done naff all, is now all over dad because she has a chip on her shoulder about me and the fact that I got on with mum. It’s all very crappy.
He literally said to me yesterday that he ‘expects’ me to help and commit. Literally no understanding for the state of my life right now. Kicking me when I’m down effectively.

You can choose guilt (which you know objectively is unjustified), or resentment and exhaustion (which is not; and which probably comes with a side order of guilt about the other things you should be doing).