If people aren't owning homes how will the country afford care for the elderly?

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Saw on the news that less and less young people are getting on the housing ladder because of rising house prices.

However, I was thinking, at the same time a large proportion of people release assets from their home to be able to afford nursing care in their old age. If this cannot happen, how will people/the country afford nursing care for an increasing number of people without an asset to fund this?

That's outrageous, it's in the crag guidelines (I think it's in there) that there has to be at least one care home in the area that will accept fully la funded residents. What about the ones who have no funds? In your area it doesn't sound like money gets you a choice at all, just money gets you care. that's abysmal :(. £800 a week? Blimey, my aunt's is £490, the 5* one with cinema, salon, on site restaurant blah blah was only £530 but we couldn't guarantee we'd be able to keep up with the top up fees.

I can honestly not complain about the standard of care my aunt receives, looking at the cqc report for it and online reviews compared to the 5* one weve had a very lucky escape, we were very nearly blinded by the cosmetic factors, wrongly assuming posh and more money = better. It couldn't be further from the truth.

It's how it is. Affluent area. My parents paid £1k a week each. The guy at the la (who I used to work with) is beside himself as he can't find anywhere to place people coming out of hospital.

So it's as I said, money isn't getting people a choice in your area, just getting them care. Which is a different issue. A very sad one indeed.

It is giving them a choice. You can have the shithole for £800 a week or you can have the good place for £1,000 a week. If you have no money you can't have residential care and have no choice. Tory council for you.

I think, in my grandparent's case, the money got them care too. Without this the only suitable place was miles away and I'm not sure a place was available. Thankfully the annuity bought by the house sale meant they could afford it.

So, if people aren't owning houses, what then? Even if fully funded LA places exist there will be a much greater need for them. Yes, might be other ways to get funding but I don't know of many ways to raise the sort of money full time care requires. Other than substantially greater taxes. Not happening yet, though, is it?

the shift in demographics...increasing numbers of elderly with fewer and fewer younger people is posing an increasing challenge for much of the developed world
most notably Japan.

Even those with money for carehomes may have difficulties if there just arent enough care homes to cope with growing numbers of frail elderly...and not enough people willing to work for the sorts of wages on offer

Andromeda. Its women who are always expected to do it.

Just like your MIL did.

And there would have to be an allowance paid.

Soon "granny dumping" will become a UK phenomenon as well as a US one.

Granny dumping already happens here. People drop,their elderly relatives off at A&E just before leaving to go,on holiday.

A lot of this is highly variable, not so much postcode lottery as region of Britain lottery. For instance, Surrey has a lot of elderly people and a lot of its budget is given over to adult social care. I leave you to judge whether it's therefore in their financial interests whether or not to turn a blind eye to shabby, death-trap care homes that come with a body count.

The plush, lovely looking hotel-like care homes - great! But there's a lot of 'fronting up' going on, I warn you. They will spend the best part of £100K on refurbishment, and not on staff. It's like the privatised rail networks and their announcements making out you're on an aeroplane about to touch down, it's all presentation. Often these mega bucks place cut costs because they're encouraged to open new homes to meet the need for more homes for the elderly. The Govt and CQC turn a blind eye to Barchester Care Homes for this very reason.

Look, if you want to know about care homes, I suggest you log on to:

www.yourvoicematters.org.uk/

That tells it how it is, and my family also were threatened with being barred from a Barchester care home after we raised concerns about our mother's care. Their action was taken with the full cooperation of Surrey County Council's Safeguarding teams - a lovely bunch they are too.

To say you get more if you pay more - it aint necessarily so. If you pay for a first class ticket and your train is cancelled, you're still not getting there.

BTW Which's Feb issue this month did a piece on care homes if you're interested, but the 'ratings' they go by are a bit rubbish, because CQC's ratings are largely a joke. Homes get visited maybe once every two years if that, and it's an open secret they're tipped off by the CQC beforehand.

We won’t need care homes in the future. They will have raised the retirement age so much, and working conditions will be so abysmal that we’ll all be dropping dead at work at the age of 80. Et voilà, care homes will be cut out of the equation.

I can only speak from my own experience. The end of life care my mum got was fantastic. The staff fought the GP to get her what they believed she should have. They cried when she - and other residents - died. Several of them took the day off to go to her funeral. I know you can't buy that but they were probably paid more than minimum wage.

I don't think I've heard of a care home paying their staff more than min wage and I have friends and family throughout the country working in different ones private and public provision.

I'm lucky my parents didn't need any care and I'm hoping that I won't either.
Maybe more people use them now as society is institutionalised from an early age now, from being about a year old to death.
Kids are in school much longer than previous generations, childcare provision, more going to uni etc. It's normal now.

www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/news/health/blackpool-care-home-we-can-t-afford-to-pay-staff-minimum-wage-1-9019442

I think euthanasia laws will come in, I have patients who have been in £1200 a week nursing homes for 9 years.

You’d need a lot of equity to pay that. We’re getting better at keeping people alive & will get even better at it in the future.

That's Blackpool - not a lot of money about there.

My dear father decided he needed the support of a care home, after a medical appointment on a Thursday morning. He picked a local care home, went for a viewing on the next day (Friday) and moved in on the Saturday

Interesting. My father was self-funding, yet it still took weeks for him to get into a care home and he still needed to be assessed etc and it would have taken longer except that it was near Christmas and hospitals like to get patients out at Christmas. And then after 2 weeks that particular care home decided his needs were too great and we needed to find him a nursing home instead which cost nearly twice as much.

There does need to be a care tax that everyone pays to pool the risk. My father was in a care home for about 6 months. My aunt for about 2 years. My other aunt, not at all. I don't think you should have to pay for old age care, for me it's the same as healthcare. We need to pay more tax.

Also people need to consider whether they want to be kept alive if they suffer a major stroke or similar. I can't see the point of keeping alive someone in their 90s who has no quality of life whatsoever. But people need to be able to make the choice when they are mentally capable to make it easier for their loved ones and medical staff to decide eg whether to bother with a feeding tube if someone can't swallow anymore.

I have patients who have been in £1200 a week nursing homes for 9 years
they are cash cows for the nursing homes, those with money and assets will be kept alive for as long as it takes for private care homes to drain them of all their resources.

I hope we do have the option to end our own lives in an efficient, pain-free way. I have no wish to exist and endure once all the positives have gone, and to watch my children’s lives being eaten up by their care of me. I love them and they love me, they’d accept my right to choose.
As for all those saying that families would have to step up, many won’t. The country is full of those who dislike or actively hate their parents, or are indifferent and pay dutiful visits a couple of times a year. You are saying that they’d take on the incontinence, confusion, interference and constant medical requirements of their elderly parents? Dream on.
Allowing people the choice of death on their own terms is a sensible option. I’m with Sir Terry Pratchett on that.

NovemberWitch the country is full of people who cant care for elderly parents because they got on their bike to look for work and moved where the work was like they were told to.

And Carers Allowance is less than JSA Just so you know. Unless people are willing to vote for more support for carers this wont change.

The trouble is people want it both ways.

I know. I’m in my late 50s and looking after elderly parents whilst working. I’ve worked all over the country, but came back. It’s why I’m pro Dignitas. If you’d put down a pet in pain whose quality of life had deteriorated, why would you not want the same freedom to choose for yourself?

why would you not want the same freedom to choose for yourself?

Because it could easily end up not being a choice. People at their most vulnerable will feel pressurised and that they are a burden on their families or the state. I can not imagine feeling more unloved and unwanted in this case scenario. It devalues life. Just because someone is old and perhaps has dementia does not mean they can have no quality of life. How far do you take the 'quality of life argument', who else would be 'for the chop'?

where i live home and assets are not considered only the personal income. and then it is 80% for care facility fees. the care facility was the only one in town and wealthy or not all received identical care food staff.
with 80% going towards care, home maintenance taxes due quickly become impossible for widowers and necessitate the sale of the home by family, which then becomes part of income and for that year the fees are higher (but capped).

As baby boomers die their assets will be passed onto their children who will then be able to afford a home. The problem will be that people will be locked out if their lives parents didn’t own a home or needed to pay for care.

Socialism isn’t currently the answer because the left wing is currently heavily pro mass migration and wouldn’t be able to build houses fast enough to keep up with that.

Socialism isn’t currently the answer because the left wing is currently heavily pro mass migration and wouldn’t be able to build houses fast enough to keep up with that.

Well capitalism isn't the answer unless you are happy leaving old people destitute / unable to afford their care.

There is a demographic bulge with a lot of older people currently. A
lack of housing will become less of a problem as they die off and their homes come on to the market. Prices should at least stabilise over the next decades.
Houses may go back to how they were viewed when I was first in the property market. They were something you bought over your lifetime to give you security in your old age. They were not some kind of personal bank/ cash cow. Certainly you could hand on the proceeds to your children but it was not usually a life changing sum as it can be nowadays.
As for paying for care, I don’t know where I stand really. We all worked hard to pay our mortgages in the belief partly that the asset would be there to pass on. I am left hoping I just have a massive heart attack rather than dementia in my final years.
I think possibly the fairest way is to have a cap but calculated on a percentage basis. People who have benefitted from this odd property market my generation have had may have homes worth millions. They should pay more but some one with a house worth £150k should not have nothing left to pass on to tier family because of costs. Or perhaps bring back an inheritance tax but ring fenced for care cost nationally.