My mother had a serious stroke at the end of January this year, losing all mobility in her right side, and with significant speech impairment. After a period in hospital, my father, sister and ! took part in a family meeting, the outcome of which was that she could only be properly cared for in a nursing home, as my father, at 81, was unable to provide the relevant care at home. After a whistle-stop tour of nursing homes (we were given around 5 working days to find one), we made our decision, and a place was offered by the home at a cost of c.£68 per day payable by the social services department of the local council pending assessment of her assets, and her resulting contribution to the costs of her care. This has now been completed, debts to the council paid, and we have been told that the home would bill her directly from now on. It seems that the home now want to charge £92 per day for the same care. This sounds neither logical nor fair.
When her savings reach £23,000, Social Services will begin to pay a proportion of her care fees, and when they get down to £14,000, they will pay the whole amount. I'm sure they won't want to be paying £92, and I'm guessing will only pay £67.
I'm concerned that we/she are being stitched up on this one. Clearly the alternative is to vote with our feet and move her, but that's not so easy when she is totally dependent on the carers, and is building relationships with them. I think it would be very traumatic for her to move to another home.
Does anyone else have experience of "the system", and in particular the charging structure? We know that her money is going to be sucked away anyway until it reaches the magic £14,000, so all it's doing is delaying the inevitable, but the principle of what the home is doing seems to be wrong to me.
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