Respite fees and admission to hospital

Benefits, finances and funding
1

Hi Everyone.
I’ve been searching the internet for some information on this subject without success so I hope someone here on the forum has had similar experience.

My brother and I have been providing care for my elderly mother for some time. Recently she was taken into a residential care home both for respite and to allow an assessment to be carried out by adult social care. The length of the respite was not fixed and the care home was happy to extend the stay week by week. This is the general background and all this happened during full Covid 19 lockdown. After about 7 weeks in the home she was admitted to hospital and was quite unwell for a time and her dementia/Alzheimer’s condition was worsening rapidly over a 4 week period in hospital. The outcome is that she now need to transfer to a nursing home following a full nursing assessment by the hospital. So she can not return to the previous residential care home.

The question I have is that the care home want to charge my mother the full fees for the 4 weeks she was in hospital and this seems a little excessive to me. The facts are that the home were only providing respite care on an unspecified length. There was no contract and they did not make it known to the family that the fees still applied even when she moved to hospital. Is this the norm for homes to charge in this way?

Many thanks…

2

I suppose the obvious answer may seem .yes… the room can not be used by anyone else. I would look on the care home web site. There should always be a contract. As it covers all parties etc. To be fair as the home is concerned they would of been expecting. Your mother to return unless otherwise informed. At this point a decision could have taken place. It not just the room it’s the associated costs to the room - staffing/foods/house keeping etc.

If the fees were being paid by Social Services. They would normally keep paying for the room. It maybe you as a family will have to negotiation some of the fees.

Care homes provide the own policies and procedures. There are some general standard practices.

You could speak with CQC

https://www.cqc.org.uk/contact-us/how-complain/complain-about-adult-social-care-service