GOLDEN YEARS
Taking Care of Your Future
Will you need to sell your home to pay for your future care? How can you fund any support you need without losing your home? What exactly are the changes to social care and what do they mean for older people living in Worcestershire? Here, Sara Simson, Partner at Redditch law firm, FBC Manby Bowdler explains more about the reforms which will be made law in 2023 and why it’s more important than ever to start planning for your future care so you and your family are not left out of pocket. So, what’s new? The Government recently announced changes to social care, which will come into effect in October 2023. The new regulations were meant to tackle unfairness in the way the social care system is funded, however, when you get into the details of the new legislation, it hasn’t really levelled the playing field at all.
England will need to spend on their personal care over their lifetime. The Government announced the £86,000 limit to put a stop to unpredictable and unlimited care costs and ensure that people who pay for their own care (self-funders) can access better value care but the ‘care cap’ is very misleading and that is why it has been debated a lot in parliament and in the press. The ‘care cap’ small print The first thing to be aware of is that care is the only thing covered by the care cap. It covers the amount you will pay over your lifetime for the care you need but it doesn’t include your daily living costs such as food, utilities and any non-nursing care, should
Many people will still have to spend a lot of their own savings or sell their house to pay for their own care later in life, even with the introduction of the ‘care cap’.
you move into a care home.
The so-called ‘care cap’ is a big part of the social care reforms, and it is being introduced to put a limit on the amount anyone in
£3,000 per month. However, when you look
n 28 | Worcestershire Now | Issue 243 | February 2022
How might this affect you? Let us look at an example. If you are living with dementia in a care home, you may be paying care fees of
to the delivery of care and the other £2,000 is associated with daily living costs. Therefore only £1,000 counts towards the care cap while the other £2,000 does not. In fact, based on the average period of time someone stays in care and the difference between care costs and daily living costs, most care residents will never hit the £86,000 cap. So whilst you may not pay more than £86,000 towards your care, this doesn’t mean you will not pay more than £86,000 for your stay in a care home as a whole when the daily living costs are factored in. Why is this important? Because the money you will be paying for your living costs (which can add a considerable amount onto the weekly cost of your care) will not be taken into account when the Government decides how much you should be contributing to your own care, and this could eat through any savings or assets you have very quickly.
at the breakdown of those fees, it may be the case that only £1,000 of that invoice relates
CONTINUED OVER THE PAGE
