Carehome taking all the money

[Pugsrus]

At the minute we are using her personal money to pay the care home fees ,yet other residents are getting it for free .
It seems very unfair we now have to sell the house,so we will be paying Well over £250,000 in care home fees ..how is this fair .she saved for years to pass the money on to her grandchildren.
Is there anything we can do

The majority of people don't spend years in care homes, I think the average stay is something like 10months.
I thought i might have to sell my Mum's home for care if her dementia became unsafe for her to be at home but she actually died of cancer and I cared for her in my home. Which was incredibly stressful and hard.
But I would completely agree with the poster who said we really should prepare more for old age and infirmaty. My house really wasn't entirely suitable so we muddled through.
DH's parents made a poor choice for their final house as they never considered the possibility that either of them would lose mobility.
My next house will be one I can get old in.
Having accessible space and bathrooms really does mean you can stay at home longer with support.

no thread is so on a different topic that the Shelter bleaters can't get in.

USA rental legislation can also provide for eviction at two weeks notice, at gunpoint if needed. Here it takes up to a year and no guns involved.

all for legislation stopping bad landlords. As long as it is matched with quick eviction of deal/steal/wreck tenants with NO council rehoming afterwards. We all pay to house the drug dealers.

@endofthelinefinally

When I lived and worked in USA all my contemporaries rented. For me it was great. I had a comfortable apartment and no responsibilities. If anything broke or went wrong a simple phone call sorted it asap. The problem is that in the UK that doesn't happen. If the whole industry could be regulated to get rid of bad landlords thing woyld be very different.

This is very true. I remember renting in the UK was a nightmare.

Also I really think we need to stop the shit about "working hard your whole life for it" the vast majority of people needing care now did not work their whole life for a 250k house. They worked for some of it... most of it is just good fortune that the housing market absolutely exploded in their lifetime. My in laws paid 18k for their house in the 80s, they've never remortgage so it's been paid off for years so theyve just been sitting on an asset that has increased in value tenfold.

Correct. It is primarily unearned capital.

It doesn’t help that care homes rake in so much money. My Nan, prior to her death, was charged £800 per week. Ridiculous when the majority of old people eat very little, and just seem to be wheeled into a communal room to sit for the day, so not quite sure what justifies that sort of money.

@LunaNorth Have you looked after an aged relative?

@Beamur My father altered his home to be easy to change to a one level living with wet room and sockets placed with bedside tables in mind.

This did make stressful times easier when he got sick as with wood flooring it was easy to get him about.

More housing with annexes need to be built, wouldn’t be difficult in a three story town house to have the ground floor with a wet room and bedroom sitting area, kitchenette on one wall

livelivebehappy Cost of carers, public liability insurance, food, nurses, utility bills, rent to name but a few costs that have to be met by carehomes. Minimum wage £8.79 per hour for one carer x 24 ( it's 24 hour care they receive) =£210.96 per day so £800 a week is cheap really!.

Unless, if course you expect the carers to work for nothing? Bad enough what they have to do they only get a pittance for.

ivykaty44 excellent ideas! And such common sense!

You see, I don't think £100 or thereabouts a day is unreasonable to cover full board, overnight stay, 24 hour care, all laundry costs, personal care, heating, lighting, building maintenance and HR and admin costs of running a business which employs care workers, cooks, cleaners, etc.
If you had to pay the real costs of all of this in your own home I can't imagine it would be much cheaper.

@Beamur care home managers make a hell of a profit. The poor staff are on minimum wages. If you look online businesses have to publish their profits, bonuses etc.
It's sickening. They tried to charge my grandad extra for PPE due to covid even though the council was helping them with funding and they had gave themselves 1 million in bonuses and a few million in profits last year.

I shouldn't have said managers I meant care home owners

Have you had a continuing healthcare assessment done?

@StoneSourFan
Yep, I don't doubt it. I've seen the car the owner of MIL's care home drives. I'd still rather have her spend her money on living there than have the strain of caring for her myself.
What has struck me as unfair are the care homes which charge self funders more to offset the fees being paid by the Council.
Not where she is now, but one place she was in for respite charged self funders £300 a week more than other residents. It was an awful, miserable place and charged £900 a week for pretty dismal care.

I don’t know why people piously suggest that caring for the person themselves is the way to go. Often it’s just not possible if the person needs 24/7 care, can’t be left alone at all, and/or is up and down half the night, calling or shouting out, all of which are common with dementia.

But yes, it does seem very unfair when some people are getting the same care for far less (except for a small amount their pension will all be going towards the fees.)

We’ve had 2 self funders in this family - my FiL and my mother. OTOH it’s something of a ‘luxury’ to be able to choose the time and place, rather than being at the mercy of social workers, who (understandably because of the cost) will typically wait until family carers are on their knees with exhaustion, or there is literally no other option, before going down the care home route.,

I hope I die before I have to go into a care home. No desire to live out my days having to be looked after by anyone.

I think it very unfair for people who can afford to pay for care moaning about those that have probably spent their life in poverty getting cheaper care.

@Sostenueto

I think it very unfair for people who can afford to pay for care moaning about those that have probably spent their life in poverty getting cheaper care.

What actually happens is those that have saved a little and bought a house get stripped of their assets very rapidly to pay for care as running care homes is expensive. However, what private residents do is subsidise those that have no money or have exhausted their funds and then rely on local authority funding. That is no secret.

Those that are wealthier tend to have either transferred their assets many years previously which makes it hard to pursue them for wilfully disposing of assets to avoid charges, or have set up trust funds which are virtually untouchable.

The principal is very much like taxation. Those at the bottom end don't save but pay a little tax. Those in the middle save and pay a lot of tax and the richest will only pay tax if the tax rates are not punitive as they can structure their affairs accordingly. Hence why when government needs more money, it isn't the rich that will pay.

It illustrates why having punitive rates for the rich is a waste of time...the evidence is that the more you reduce tax rates on the rich...the more tax they actually pay !!

Some entitled people on this thread (thankfully not most!)

I'm not in the UK but the system is much the same here - although the amount the resident can keep is higher. My mother died one month after the govt took over paying for her care, but I didn't begrudge her money being used to pay for it before that. Yes, people save money for a rainy day, but going into care is that rainy day, and after all the resident is hardly going to want the money for anything else by the time they go into care. Inheriting money is not a right, and why should the taxpayer fund the considerable cost of caring for someone in a rest home when the resident is sitting on a fortune (and their descendants are sitting with their hands out waiting for them to die).

Those at the bottom who have always been on low pay have never had the opportunity to save. They are too busy just trying to survive and feed their families. Do you honestly think those working using foodbanks can save for care in later life? Most of them will die before they hit the new pension age of 70.
Eaglejulesk totally agree.

@Sostenueto . I,don't disagree they can't save. Didn't suggest otherwise

Have you looked into the cost of her staying at home with family helping her and a carer 2x per day?

@Beamur, I think the average stay is more like 2 - 2.5 years.

My mother was in hers (dementia only) for 8 years - from age 89 - 97. During that time I saw many other residents arrive, decline, and quietly disappear, but I can only recall one whose stay was measured in months only, and that was because he had a fatal heart attack.

Maybe it’s different in non-dementia or nursing homes, where people tend to be physically rather then mentally frail, though they may of course be both.

You could care for her yourself, even quit work if it means the 250k will benefit you more in the long run. However if care home is a better place for her then so be it.