Councils are moving care home residents to save money – and endangering lives

[HollyhocksandPeons]

Councils are moving care home residents to save money – and endangering lives

Don't know what to say - just wanted to flag it up. Heart breaks, literally.

Source: Councils are moving care home residents to save money – and endangering lives

It has been happening for years. Always cost cutting and not in the best interest of the individual. CHC do it too.

But would you as a family pay more in fees then money runs our? Most won't. Why should taxpayers?

The councils are short of money and can't fund the exoensive homes for peopke not able to fund them.

A lot of people without self funding money are already placed a the homes people running out of funding are moved to. They would most likely also had enjoyed the better and more expensive placements.

Who chose the care home in the first place? If it costs more than the local authority can pay who should pay it? Care homes round here cost from £1000 per week to £4000, if my granny chooses the £4k home, who should pay the extra £3k once her funds run out?

The family can choose to pay.

The council can say no to fund it and the person will have to move to a cheaper home.

Some care homes accept council funding after self funding runs out but they don't have to.

I work in care management. What I see a lot is families putting their family members in an expensive home, paying for a couple of months then wanting a care assessment and financial assessment because now they can’t afford it. Most of the time the council will then take over funding but if they haven’t been in there very long or they are deemed not to need much in the level of care it will be decided that the council will only fund visits at home. I have seen families give up their council house to force the council into paying only for this to backfire as the family have made the relative homeless and they have got into trouble for this. I have never seen anyone been forced to move out of a home that they now consider their home because they have lived in it for more than 6 months.

what I do see a lot is families that have to pay a top up, ie the council funding and then family has to pay a bit on top to afford the fancy home, often the son who brags about his brand new Porsche and the many holidays he has had this year who only visits once a year refuse to pay it but the 70 year old man who is retired on a modest pension who can’t afford a car will happily pay for the top up fee for his 98 year old mother who he visits 4x a year.

The many dealings I have had with social workers over the last ten years, I have always found them very understanding, if we don’t believe that a resident will cope at home we will show them the evidence to back this up and they won’t move them.

sorry if any of that is garbled, in the middle of feeding a baby

This should backfire. Sorry.

To be fair, every care home cost 'more than the LA will pay'. I chose a reasonably priced care home for my mother who was self funding, because I was mindful that if she outlived her funds the LA would be paying. The care was brilliant but the care home was not 'swanky'.

When her funds ran out the LA offered £623 a week. They asked if I would pay a top up - no. Her care home would accept that amount so they negotiated and came to terms at £1100 (as a self funder she'd been paying £1200). She remained in her placement because they couldn't find anywhere cheaper.

So if you are choosing a care home for your self-funding relative choose a reasonably priced one and they are likely to be able to stay there.

The problem is that lots of local authority care homes that used to offer quality care at reasonable prices closed years ago and residents were pushed into the private sector, which historically were always more expensive but provided a few more " luxuries"
The worst of both worlds now exists. Private care homes charging exorbitant prices because they can and places are scarce. Local authorities trying to force those care homes to take in people of poorer means because they have nowhere else to send them.
Sometimes when assets run out a compromise is reached where the care home has to agree a much lower rate with the Local Authority but that's not sustainable. The few self-funding residents are then effectively subsidizing the Local authority- funded ones for the same food, facilities and staff.
That's why the care home has to eventually ask the LA to find somewhere else or pay the going rate. That's the point that relatives might be asked for "top ups" but there is no legal responsibility for relatives to do this.
There really needs to be a building program for new LA homes to increase the number of affordable places.

I sadly think we have to change the law so that people can’t sign their houses over to their kids and expect the council to pick up the care bill.

And I think that the government should pay more to people who care for their own families- why pay a family member £400 a month when they pay thousands to care homes? I cared for my mum for several years. I managed to juggle a small business around it that paid me slightly more than carer’s allowance would, but it was tough.

Most of the homes when I was looking asked for proof of funding for a minimum of 12 months. Some made it quite clear that if funds were not in place after this time, the resident would need to move. I assumed the initial 12 months was to give time for property to be sold.

Yes, relative had to show 18 months of fees before they were allowed in.

This was made absolutely clear to us in both occasions that we’ve made arrangements for grandparents to go into care.

In both cases we chose the nicer home knowing the risks (both died before it was a. Issue).

There are many, many problems with social care funding, but this isn’t one I can get worked up about.

So the care home that has had every penny of someone’s savings won’t drop their price to keep the person? They are the problem. Money grabbing.

Local authority can’t afford to pay inflated costs. If you want to prevent his happening chose a cheaper home or one that guarantees they’ll drop to LA rates when you ring out of money.

The maddening thing is that self funded residents are subsidising those funded by the council. My mum could have stayed longer in her care home had she paid the actual cost. But when she ran out of funds, we discovered that the council, for those who couldn't pay, paid the care home two thirds of the fees that mum had been paying. The real cost was clearly somewhere in the middle.

To add insult to injury they wouldn't even pay that to keep mum there. They moved her to an extra care flat with five care visits a day, despite her being paralysed and helpless. It was disastrous.

If the home has a mix of self funders and Local Authority funded, the self funders are subsidising the Local Authority funded residents. How is that fair? You subsidise someone else who isn't paying, so your money runs out faster, which then jeopardises your own place.

The whole system needs an overhaul.

Its not fair of course.

But equally, whats the the alternative? with an ageing population and people living longer than they ever have- rates of dementia are unfortunately going to explode in years to come and considering that nursing homes where I live for example, cost 2k per week, thats £104,00 per year per person. Where is the money going to come from to pay for this for everyone? the government simply doesnt have the funds to pay this

This is a ticking time bomb waiting to happen.

The whole system needs an overhaul - totally agree

i am not sure that a “for profit” model sits well with me

in an idle moment I estimated costs to run a care home - high house prices affect this sector as much as nurseries - cost of mortgage on a building could easily exceed staff costs - yet o think most would agree the value is having good staff - we need to get our housing costs under control in this county and that does mean that “homes as an investment” model also needs to be broken

I'm so sorry that sounds awful

Apparently our new PM is looking for cross party consensus to tackle social care. Tories are saying they will play ball but only on condition there's no tax increase or borrowing. I'm thinking that Tories would hate for Labour to get any credit for success in this difficult area.

Councils will not fund top of the range luxury facilities, they will only fund a care facility that means the medical and social care facilities a person needs, and they have a price they pay for the care - not all homes thus accept it. They are not endangering lives, they are simply moving them usually only once as a condition to taking over the funding. I can tell you from experience that the fancier homes often kick out dementia patients as the disease progresses, even if you pay there’s no guarantee they won’t have to move. Councils cannot be paying more than they have to

My Nan has been self funding for the last few years, over £300,000 she has spent in care home fees. She is now below the self funding threshold but her home costs approximately £1500pw and the local authority would only pay around £800. We knew if the home wouldn’t keep her once the money ran out she’d need to move and were ok with that. She had advanced dementia and didn’t know where she was so a move wouldn’t have been too stressful for her thankfully.

My parents were just about to start talks/negotiations on if she could stay but unfortunately she passed away at the weekend so it’s now not needed.

The problem is, around us anyway, there are no care homes that cost the local authority rate, every single one is above that so what is supposed to happen?

But you already can’t do that. It’s deprivation of assets. I think LAs are fairly hot on it.

The need for social care could also decrease as there are fewer people to start with in younger age groups, life expectancy has decreased, people are dying younger of obesity related conditions and won't live long enough to be at risk of getting dementia.

Yes there’ll be fewer elderly people, but what will reduce even more is the younger people - the number of taxpayers for every pensioner is reducing. So it won’t help much as LAs won’t have the same amount of money for fewer pensioners, they’ll have less money.

But we will have increased use of WLIs which will increase life expectancy particularly if the early research showing a slowing of ageing with these drugs is confirmed in larger trials.