Telegraph speaks out about care funding issues

The Telegraph’s website has published several articles about care home fees, the means-testing system and how the ‘crisis’ in services for the elderly has led to a massive increase in the number of homes being sold to fund care. Located in the Health section of the website, the new articles join existing content such as ‘top tips’ on planning for long-term care costs. The guide to care home fees gives a brief overview of how a local authority calculates an individual’s contribution to their care home costs. The article warns against deliberately selling the family home to avoid its inclusion in the means-testing process, as councils can still include the property’s value when calculating assets. A second article focuses on the ‘cruel shock’ of the means-testing rules that can strip a person of all their assets in order to pay for residential care. With care home fees costing hundreds of pounds a week, savings soon run out and often the family home must be sold. A third piece explores this issue in more depth, reporting that 45,000 homes were sold in 2008 to pay for care home places – a record number and a rise of 12% in 5 years. Charities and politicians speak out against this trend and the growing number of people that are forced to entirely fund their own care, describing the situation as ‘a national disgrace’ and a ‘cruel and pernicious system which...needs urgent reform.’ The Government is criticised for doing nothing to improve the situation over the last 12 years, although it is preparing to publish a green paper on social care funding in spring 2009. It is hoped that the green paper will lead to an overhaul of the current system and put a stop to pensioners being forced to take out equity release loans or sell their homes at low prices to fund care.

Meanwhile, in the Telegraph’s online Politics section, it is reported that the Government should buy homes from the elderly to enable them to move into care or into sheltered accommodation. The recommendation comes from the Local Government Select Committee in the wake of the property crash. The crash has left many homes unsold, or sold at a lower-than-expected price, where the proceeds were intended to fund care costs. The Committee’s report suggests that the Government uses taxpayers’ money from the National Affordable Housing Programme to buy up empty and unsold properties. As well as helping the elderly, the move would also help those facing repossession as the Committee has found that banks are not following Government guidelines which aim to protect homeowners from being evicted. Click here to read more.