Self Funding Residents

Introduction

Choosing a care home to live in is a very important decision and we want to give you as much information and help as possible. The regulations about public funding for those who are considering living in a care home are mainly straightforward, eg.:

If you have enough income to meet the cost of the care home fees you will be a self-funder.
If you have capital or savings above the capital limit (Ł22,250 in 2008/9) you will be a self-funder. This may include the value of any property that you own.

In both cases you will need to arrange your own contract with the Care Home.

This information will help you and your family understand what you can expect from us and where there are exceptions to the simple statements made above.

Care Assessment

You have a right to a professional care assessment by us no matter how much money you have. This will help you to decide if living in a care home is the right decision for you and will be helpful if you need our funding at some time in the future.

Your social worker will also advise you about Continuing Health Care where in certain cases the cost of the care home could be met by the NHS. You should note that there are strict criteria for this and the final decision rests with the NHS

When will we give financial help?

If you can afford to meet the full cost of the care home fees you are a classed as a “self-funder”. To be a self-funder you must have sufficient weekly income to meet the fees or assets/savings of Ł22,250 or more. This figure is called the upper capital limit and is increased every April. The only exception to this is where you lack the capacity to make the decisions or do not have a family member or someone else to help with the decisions. If this is the case, the council will contract for your place in the care home, pay the fees on your behalf but you will have to pay the council what it is spending for you. This is called being a Full Fee Payer.

If you are a self-funder, and when your savings have reduced to the upper capital limit, the council will then contract with the care home, pay the care home fees and carry out a financial assessment to work out how much you can afford to contribute to the costs.

A social worker will have to carry out a an assessment to make sure your needs are being met and to confirm that the care home is right for you. It is important that you give us 3 months’ notice to organise this and a smooth takeover of your contract with the care home. This is another good reason why you should have a social work care assessment before you consider going into a care home.

It is our policy that we will start to give financial help from the time that your savings reduce to the upper capital limit but if you do not ask for a care assessment we will only give financial help from when you ask.

Choosing a Care Home

As a Self-Funder you can choose to live in any care home. If you have decided to have a care assessment you can ask your social worker to help you to choose the right care home for you. This might be just finding out for you which care homes are in the area that you want to live in and whether they have vacancies but visits can be arranged to help you to decide if you want this help.

If it is likely that you will need our financial support in the future it would be helpful for you to know that we will be able to take over paying the fees when the time comes.

The care assessment mentioned earlier will be a big help and your social worker will be able to get you advice on how much we will be able to pay and any other information that might help you to choose.

What will it cost?

For people who are financially supported by us the care home fees are negotiated every year but some care homes can choose to charge a top-up which must be paid by a family member or friend.

For people who are self-funding, it will be a private arrangement between you and the care home and we cannot interfere. It is very important that you find out from any care home that you are thinking about living in:

What are the weekly fees? Are they payable weekly or monthly? Payable in advance or in arrears?
What extras you might have to pay for?
How often a fee increase is likely?
Who is legally liable to pay?

Will I have a contract?

You will be given a contract to cover your stay. The government’s Office of Fair Trading has produced guidance on terms in care home contracts to ensure that they are worded clearly and fairly. If you would like a copy of the leaflet ‘Fair Terms for Care’ please contact Trading Standards on the contact details included in the Further Information Section at the end of this leaflet. We cannot interfere with your private contract but our Trading Standards service can give you help if you are not sure about any of the wording. They can look at such things as terms which:

Seek to exclude the care homes legal liabilities;
Impose unfair penalties, restrictions or obligations on you;
Are unclear about what you have to pay

Will I have to sell my house?

If you have sufficient weekly income to cover the costs of the care home fees or if you have assets or savings over Ł22,250 (2008/9 capital limit) you will be a self-funder. What this means to you is explained later in this leaflet. This may mean that you will have to sell your property but there are three exceptions to this:

If you have a property which you need to sell to meet the costs of the care home, we can meet the costs until the property is sold. We will recover what it has cost us when the property is sold and we will place a legal charge on the property. A legal charge is where we register with the Land Registry that it is owed money and a final exchange of contracts cannot take place until this has been repaid (very similar to when a mortgage is taken out).
If you need to sell a property but don’t want to, you can ask for the Deferred Payments Scheme where we will meet the costs during your lifetime and these costs will have to be repaid when the property is eventually sold. A legal charge will be placed on the property.
The government has introduced a 12 week property disregard where we may be able to meet the costs of the care home for the first 12 weeks and the value of the property will be ignored for this period. We will contract with the care home for this 12 week period and then you will become a self-funder though you could ask to take advantage of the two schemes set out above. We will not place a legal charge on the property. This will give you some time to decide if you want to sell your property.

Note: For each of these schemes it will be necessary to carry out a financial assessment to work out how much you can afford to contribute to the cost of the care home from your weekly income and for the first two this will reduce the amount that you will have to repay. There are separate leaflets on how we work out your contribution, the Deferred Payments Scheme and the 12 Week Property Disregard which you can ask for.

We can discuss this further with you if you wish. For any of the above schemes a visit will always be arranged with you or your family.

Further Information

There are different ways of paying for care home fees if you do not qualify for our financial support. We are not able to advise you but if you would like to discuss these alternatives you should talk to an Independent Financial Adviser or one of the major voluntary organisations such as Citizens Advice Bureau, Age Concern, Help the Aged, etc.

If you would like to query your care home contract, contact Trading Standards on 0191 3833589.

A very useful booklet to help make decisions on entering a care home is produced by Counsel and Care and is called the ‘Complete Care Home Guide’. See their website Counsel and Care or by telephoning their advice line 0845 3007585.