Call our team of experts at Compass Continuing healthcare today to see if your relative is entitled to free care costs. Our office number is 0800 008 7777. Alternatively please complete our FREE assessment and we will contact you.
Average care costs for nursing home care in England exceeds £800 a week, or £41,600 a year. Put another way you would have to be earning a salary of £60,000 a year to pay this and every penny of your pay after tax would be swallowed up. This puts into perspective how expensive the care costs in the UK are, especially when many nursing homes, especially EMI nursing homes and specialist dementia homes, often cost well over £1,000 a week.
Should your relative be paying for care?
The first stage should be to contact the Compass Continuing Healthcare team for a free, no obligation discussion. Our number is0800 008 7777. Alternatively you may wish to complete our free assessment and a member of our team will contact you. Do not delay. At a rate of £800 a week every day in care amounts to care costs of £114.
The base position is that if an individual has assets over £23,250 they are expected to meet their care costs in full. This applies if they are receiving care from carers in their own home, or residing in a residential or nursing home.
Even once the individual’s capital assets are less than £23,250 they are expected to part contribute to their care costs until the assets go below £14,000. Only when the assets are below £14,000 do the care costs not have to be paid from the individual’s capital and should be met by the Local Authority. However even once below £14,000, the individual will have to pay a large contribution towards the cost of their care from any income they receive. If they receive a private pension of say £1,000 the majority of this would be taken, leaving the individual with a small amount for person expenditure each month.
Worse news is also still to come. The Local Authority will often have an agreed maximum they are prepared to pay for residential or nursing care. Unfortunately in many instances the standard of home provided for this lower Local Authority rate is far below what the family of an individual would be prepared to allow their relative to reside in. As such many families often pay private top up fees from their own pocket to make up the difference between what the Local Authority will pay and what a home that provides an acceptable level of care the family is happy with charges on a privately paying basis.
All however is not lost. If the individual’s need for care is primarily a health need then there is funding available via the NHS to meet the cost of their care in full. This is known as continuing healthcare funding. If this NHS funding for care homes is provided it will pay the cost of care in full and it is not in any way means tested. The individual may have their own home and or savings over the threshold of £23,250 and they are still entitled to receive continuing healthcare funding.
The difficulty is that continuing healthcare funding is very expensive for the NHS and we have often encountered a person’s needs being underscored so that they don’t meet the criteria for the funding when they should be eligible for it.
As such it is often necessary to enact the appeals procedure and dispute the results of the continuing healthcare funding assessments to ensure that the NHS funding for care homes is provided where the individual is entitled. We can assist with this process and have a high success rate of securing funding for eligible individuals from day one, often before a penny has been spent in care costs.
The key to success is to know the system and to have the expertise to be able to challenge the NHS where a relative has been incorrectly denied funding to meet their care costs. If you have any concerns regarding care costs or paying for care contact the Compass Continuing Healthcare team today to see how we can assist. Our number is 0800 008 7777. Alternatively if you complete our free, no obligation assessment we can review your particular circumstances and contact you.
Author: Tim Davies LLB
