Parents 90yrs old just managing to live in own small home until 3mths ago when one parent’s needs determined a care home was essential. More healthy one unable to cope with others zero mobility, permanent catheter needs, pads for no.2s, liquidised food requirement, some confusion (no dementia yet) etc etc… also a late stage cancer sufferer with perhaps 3-6mths left.
So went into short term self funded care to avert a crisis.
They are registered with the Adult Social Team for assessment towards being funded for care place/fees.
But savings were just under £23,500 at start and now just two months in well under the £14,250 you are allowed when fully state funded. They are on state pensions and own a very modest home worth just £100k which more healthy partner will likely be in for next 5-10yrs
We now seem to have fallen into a hole between identifying a need and getting the funding in which period all their savings could go leaving the more healthy partner no buffer at all for the future.
Has anyone else been in this situation where the system says we can’t give any further advice until the assessment is complete… while the weeks just keep passing and the money falling away.
BTW I’ve read every fact sheet I can find and there seems no clarity on this situation.
Also can funding ever be backdated to refund fees already paid?
If they had savings under £46,000 then why didn’t Social Services do a financial assessment right at the start??? Tell them they haven’t followed the rules, and you want an assessment done asap and a refund. I reclaimed £8,000 for my mum. Mention the words Local Government Ombudsman!
Thanks for the links. In the first one it seems to confirm the position we are in… that the financial assessment can only be done after a needs assessment. So it seems chasing up the needs assessment is where we’re at.
Regarding the other links and interim payments which seem logical for our situation… looks like this is only paid if you are discharged from a hospital and have significant needs. My parent went from a hospital to a NHS re-enablement facility with a view to getting back home but while in there for two weeks rather than being re-enabled went downhill so we arranged the self funded care home in the belief the system would arrange assessment/funding promptly and take over. Certainly we expected it to be sorted within the first four weeks of self funding.
So it seems with my parent’s best interests uppermost we may have opened up a funding crack we’ve fallen into.
It was the duty of the Reablement facility to ensure a “safe discharge”. Clearly going home was out of the question so they should have arranged a meeting of those concerned and drawn up a proper plan that was safe. Writing a Needs Assessment should have been done before discharge, after all all the evidence was available from the hospital. There is no excuse. Social Services are supposed to be involved in discharge arrangements. Sounds like each of those responsible was leaving it to the other one?!
Although you were doing your best at the time. Social Services would have seen this as a family financially able to support their parents. It appears the hospital may have failed to advice you that a safe discharge was available. However, like Social Services hospitals are not going to intervene and want back available beds.
Don’t be to disheartened when the time is right you can make some complaints. You may be able to reclaim some/all the money back. You do need to now make Social Services aware you are looking for a refund.
Has anyone mentioned CHC (continuing healthcare) Fast-Track to you?
This is from the Marie Curie website:
Fast track funding is intended as a swift form of funding to be put into place where an individual’s health is rapidly deteriorating to ensure that they are not left in a funding position that requires care fees to be met where it MAY be the case that they are in a palliative, end of life stage.
Thanks. Sadly re my parent in question… their health has dropped below that where they can be at home and not bad enough for hospital and not rapidly going downhill so they seem to be between various agencies. It’s all down to them getting round to the assessment. Everyone we speak to keeps saying it is not an urgent case and nothing will be progressed until they have time to assess.
Makes a mockery of you being allowed to retain a modest level of savings funds while being fully funded… when they happily do nothing while they know your funds are depleting close to zero.
You must now put all complaints in emails. Go to Social Services website, search for Adult Services Complaints and make an online complaint. This will go to the LA Complaints Officer, not the local team. Continuing Healthcare is not just for people at the end of life, but also for those with serious long term health issues. Make a formal request to the GP asking for an assessment to be made.
I just wanted to update this for those that had been kind enough to offer advice. I’m going to quote something bowlingbun said…
“it was the duty of the Reablement facility to ensure a “safe discharge”. Clearly going home was out of the question so they should have arranged a meeting of those concerned and drawn up a proper plan that was safe. Writing a Needs Assessment should have been done before discharge, after all all the evidence was available from the hospital.”
There is no doubt my father who is the parent in question is in that crossover between being totally able to make his own decisions and increasing age related confusion.
It turns out it’s recorded while in the reablement facility he was offered a month’s local authority funded care home placement to give time for them to properly assess him for the future. He turned this down saying he wasn’t just being placed anywhere they chose so would get his children (us) to place him in a privately funded care home of his choice… this despite him knowing he had very limited funds. So unknown to ourselves he’d shot us all in the foot because he became regarded as self-funding by choice and his assessment became lower priority.
Roll on six weeks from my postings here and he has now finally been assessed and placed in a very local and decent care home to be fully funded by the local authority for his remaining time. We have been offered a modest part refund and accepted that as fighting the local authority further is a stress too far on top of supporting him in the care home and mum in her flat.