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Paying for Care
Basic Points
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Long Term Care which primarily requires nursing, is free and provided by the NHS.
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Whereas care which primarily requires personal or social care rather than nursing, is the responsibility of the Local Authority in which the person lives or lived prior to the need arising, and is means tested. This means that the Local Authority will conduct a thorough investigation into your financial position and depending on the results can ask you to pay either for all of the cost of your care or at least make a contribution towards it.
For more about how they assess whether or not you will need to pay click on the following link http://www.adviceoncare.co.uk/public/means-test.htm
For those who are assessed as requiring to pay for their own care, or are responsible for overseeing paying for someone else’s care, the main concern will be not be so much the actual weekly cost, but how long care will be required for and therefore will the available money last? Ultimately the main question will be how best to pay for this care to ensure both continuity of care and to try and preserve as much capital as possible.
There are basically two main choices :
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To invest capital to try and produce the required extra income to meet the shortfall in income v cost of care in an endeavour to try and preserve as much capital as possible.
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To take out an Immediate Needs Care Annuity to ensure the shortfall is guaranteed to be met for the rest of the person’s lifetime. This is also sometimes referred to as the insurance approach.
Which way is best will in turn depend on, amongst other things:
- Your attitude to investment risk.
- Your own view as to how long care will in actual fact be required for.
- Your preference for simplicity – an investment approach will need regular reviewing and decisions to be made to ensure how best to preserve capital – whereas an annuity or Long term care Insurance if set up right should continue to meet the costs of care for the rest of their lives without much involvement.
- Whether or not continuity of care is more important than trying to preserve as much capital as possible.
Advice on Care are independent long term care funding specialists and can offer either or even a combination of these two methods. You can be assured therefore that we will provide you with an impartial report on both.
Indeed to find out more about either method please now click on either of the following links.
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