Continuing Healthcare Funding

[GlobalTravellerbutespeciallyBognor]

Friend’s DM is in a care-home. They have been funding it (£2k per week!) through the DM’s savings but they would prefer, obviously, for the council to cover it or some of it at least via CHC. Please may I ask whether anyone has had any success doing so? My friend is despondent and believes that her DM would have to be almost totally incapable before any funding was offered.

I am afraid your friend is right. Until their parents assets reach below £23k the council won't step in and even then it is a sliding scale. And CHC funding is only reserved for those with the highest level of health care (not social care) needs or end of life care and comes from the NHS budget. Some people do have some healthcare needs which could be partially funded (known as funded nursing care which is different to CHC) but without an assessment it would be hard to know. My advice would be for them to contact Age UK and get proper guidance on this. However, £2k per week is pretty standard social care care home costs in many areas so unless there are clear issues and the care home isn't able to meet their needs, my guess is they are unlikely to secure funding.

You can also google the CHC assessmemt guidance too which would give them some idea. There are two steps, the initial assessment (low bar through to full assessment), and the full assessment where needs either have to be deemed a priority or severe in order to be eligible. The full assessment is a very high bar to be deemed eligible.

CHC is extremely difficult to get. There’s a lot of guidance out there and you can have a look and get an idea as to what types of medical needs could lead to getting it. If you did think there may be eligibility then I’d suggest instructing specialist solicitors to make the claim as that would give the best prospects.

One thing to note with CHC is when you get to the end of life stage (which, for my mother, was 4 months before she actually died), you should automatically get CHC funding and any self funding should cease. No-one told me this until the day my mother died and I had no fight left in me to try and claw back the thousands in fees she’d spent over the last 4 months of her life. But I do wish I’d known.

Many thanks for your replies and helpful advice. The family will
speak to Age UK as a next step. Thanks again.

I’m so sorry to read your post and can imagine how exhausted and ‘strung out’ you were. In the course of looking into CHC, we realised that various law firms make applications for people. Their websites do mention recovery after payment has been made to the carehome so you might still be able to recover something, if eligible at the original time. (I hope this is helpful and am wishing you well.)