Will the NHS be responsible for paying for care home fees? Is the family home exempt from the means testing calculations? Is there anything I can do to protect my relative’s assets?
Contact our team of experts at Compass Continuing healthcare today to see if your relative is entitled to full NHS funding assistance for paying for care home. Our office number is 0800 008 7777. Alternatively please complete our FREE online assessment and we will contact you.
Will the NHS be responsible for paying for care home fees? Is the family home exempt from the means testing calculations? Is there anything I can do to protect my relative’s assets?
The good news is that there is funding available from the NHS to meet the cost of care. Paying for a care home does not have to fall on the sole responsibility of the individual. If the need for care is primarily a health need then there is funding available via the NHS that meets the cost of paying for care home in full. This is known as continuing health care or sometimes shortened to CHC funding.
If continuing healthcare has been provided then it is irrelevant what assets the individual has as CHC funding is not in any way means tested.
Therefore where an individual is in receipt of the funding the family home is protected and will not have to be sold to meet the cost of care. Additionally any income the individual receives will not be required as a contribution to their care costs, nor will any capital assets be spent.
In the absence of continuing healthcare funding the picture is much bleaker. Here the means testing rules do apply so if the individual has assets exceeding £23,250 they have to pay for their care home costs in full. This can be very expensive and will likely result in a large proportion, if not all, of the individual’s assets being consumed to pay the cost of the care home fees. Average care home fees in England and Wales are in excess of £800 a week or £41,600 and can be far higher in certain areas.
An individual’s property is not exempt from the means testing calculation so it can often result in the home having to be sold to meet care costs that can exceed £50,000 a year.
Even once the individual’s assets have fallen below £23,250 they continue to have to contribute towards the cost of their care until the assets fall to the lower level of £14,000. Even when this has occurred the individual will continue to have to meet care costs from any income they receive. Often the majority of any income is diverted to the Local Authority leaving the individual with a small amount each month for personal expenses.
As such if there is any possibility that an individual is entitled to continuing healthcare funding to meet the cost of paying for care home it is crucial to ensure that they receive it in order to protect their assets from costs that could exceed £50,000 annually.
The difficult is that the NHS often apply a higher bar to satisfy for eligibility for CHC funding than ought to be the case, resulting in people you ought to be receiving the funding being denied it and being forced to pay privately for their care.
In order to avoid this situation you should contact an expert member of the Compass Continuing Health Care team for advice and guidance about how you can protect your relative’s assets. We have a high success rate of securing funding, both for individuals at the earliest stage of the process where they remain in hospital and have yet to be discharged to a care home, but also in overturning negative funding decisions at a later stage.
Contact us today on 0800 008 7777 to see how we can assist or complete our FREE, NO OBLIGATION online assessment and a member of our team will contact you. Don’t delay, take the first step in allowing us to navigate you free care home fees.
Author: Tim Davies LLB
