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I found another nice place which required 50 per week from me which I could consider and went on the waiting list. Six months on and that home tell me they’ve increased their fees from 450pw to 725 pw … Unbelievable. I moved her to another city because it was hilly and there was difficulty getting taxis that will take a wheelchair with a person sitting in it.
My 94 year old mother paid full fees in a care home for 4 years. When her funds reached 23k in June 2016 I applied to the council on her behalf . Even though they agreed that she qualified for funding from that date, it took 9 months and countless chasing by me for the council to make a contract with the care home, during which time my mother continued to pay the full fee. The council finally paid the backlog in December 2016 to the care home, I having wrongly assumed that they would re-imburse my mother. I wrote to the care home requesting a refund of her payments for the period, less what the council letter stated she must pay from her pension.
Additional charges (top-up fees)
Therefore there are likely to be good grounds for a retrospective claim. Tell the Continuing Healthcare team that you want to reclaim care fees already paid. Although there are restrictions on how far back you can claim, in this scenario it may still be possible to secure a year’s worth of backdated fees. Jenny – he should have been assessed as soon as he went into the care home, and the process from initial assessment to final decision should be made within 28 days. The person who told you it can take up to a year is talking nonsense, and this is possibly an attempt to avoid the assessment process taking place. I’d suggest a very strongly worded letter to the CHC team or care home , or the CEO of the Clinical Commissioning Group, and copy it to the GP plus anyone else involved in your husband’s care.
The council can then reclaim the cost of the care they have already paid. The property disregard period lasts for the first 12 weeks someone moves into a care home on a permanent basis. If they aren’t paying for their own care and looking for help from the council, then the value of their home can’t be included in their assessment during this time. You can’t usually pay your own top-up fees; they’re generally paid by a third party, such as a friend, relative or charity.
Insurance and mental health guide
Top up fees aren’t legal if the funding you’re receiving is from the NHS under Continuing Healthcare. If you’re paying someone’s top-up fees but the money is going to run out, speak to the council and manager of the care home as soon as possible. We will continue to monitor and highlight this issue with the public, councils and politicians until all councils meet their responsibilities and the families of some of the poorest older people are protected from paying unfair fees. In cases where top-up fees are paid for a higher standard of care or accommodation, these fees are fair. But our research, prompted by calls to our advice line, found that some families are being asked to pay top-up fees just for basic care. The Virginia-based Care Advantage provides a mix of personal care support and skilled services in over 40 locations in the mid-Atlantic.
Therefore, you could find yourself paying more each year to cover the difference in fees. Bayada has about 360 locations in 23 states, as well as offices in various other countries across the world. Like Care Advantage, Bayada is both a provider of home health care and personal care services.
Near Frankfurt in Germany
In my experience such ‘hotel charges’ are often a back door way of care providers wrongly charging top up fees. From reading a few more posts, it seems that the family requesting a move from a far to a nearer home may give the council an excuse to demand a topup if the closer home is more expensive than the far one. If the fees are similar then I suggest they don’t have a case. My mother has Parkinson’s and in January she had a UTI and a bad fall.
It is now a Non-Care Charge and Lifestyle Choice fee!! I have to pay £105 a week as its a Lifestyle choice for mum to choose to live in this home, and a further £40 a week for various items, that are not in the terms and condition as are hair and chiropody. These are items like £4 a week for a TV – mum has her own. And he says these charges are non -optional and must be paid . He has threatened that he will kick her out if we don’t pay up, becuase of their “Equality and diversity” policy. All these bits and bobs were included, and he says they are only for residents on NHS CHC and Local Authority Funding, who don’t pay enough.
Moving forward, he believes there will be some fluidity regarding the push-and-pull nature of bill and pay rates. During the spring of 2021, the home-based care provider started to notice “margin erosion,” forcing the company to take a look at those numbers on a quarterly basis. This free money management tool is specifically for people on Universal Credit. If there are services offered which have an additional charge like a larger room, more activities or additional qualified staff you can choose to pay for these services too.
My husband,aged 68, went into a care home in February this year. Wirral Borough Council will expect me to pay nearly £300 a week and I have to pay another £90 in top up fees. After paying the bills, I will be left with about £150 a week for food, clothes, petrol to get to see him and everything else. I asked the assessor what I was supposed to do if I needed major expenditure on the house or car. I would really appreciate any advice in dealing with a similar matter we are facing.
How can a government department get away with such cynical trickery and treating people as idiots? The meeting was a charade, a waste of everyones time and I wonder how so called ‘professionals’ can bring themselves to participate in such a dishonest sham. If you have a contract stating the original fee, it would be unreasonable for the care home to now demand more – regardless of whether or not they made a mistake. Their behaviour in giving you four days also sounds unreasonable. You may find it useful to perhaps have a solicitor send a letter to the care home.
As Dad recovered further he calmed down and is behaviour is now “typical” of dementia. In May his Social Worker decided Dad needed to be reassessed as she felt he didn’t require nursing care. The assessment was done and it was decided that from the end of May Dad needs EMI residential care, not nursing. At this point my sister was informed that the nursing home he is in requires a top up fee – £131 per week between March and end of May; and after the assessment the top-up increased to £325. I have now had to sign a 3rd party agreement with the LA to pay for the top-up. We are looking to move dad to a residential home, but this isn’t an overnight job, and we are worried how we are going to pay this top up.
There were no choices made, and the decision to place my grandmother in the care home was taken by a social worker. The length of time that this has taken and the fact we only found out about top up fees last week has completely stressed my family. IN addition we are being told we are not able to use the money that my grandmother has which sounds ridiculous, when she has the funds there to pay. I am collating all the information against legislation, the care act but am such as to find out why we cannot use her private pension and monies. My wife has Alzheimers and I can no longer care for my wife so social services & the Alzheimers Society have helped me get things moving for full time care. In my area there are only a few care homes that care for people under 65 years of age and they are all private and I don’t know how much they charge.
Social Workers wanted her to go to a care home for respite, to which we agreed (knowing there was a chance she may not be able to return home due to needing care 24/7). She was due to be there for 2 weeks respite and re-assessed before the two weeks were up. She is medically fit but has vascular dementia and has been assessed as unable to live on her own and requiring residential care home only. I doubt whether she would qualify for Continuing Healthcare at all. My dad has been in a care home for just over 2 years and everything was fine.
Often local authorities fail to direct people towards independent advice; they also fail to explain a person’s right before top-up contracts are signed. What will happen if the person paying the top-up fees can no longer afford it. Once you agree to pay the top-up, you'll sign a contract and will then be legally obliged to make the payments at the agreed times. There is no legal requirement for family members, friends or anybody else to meet this cost. The reason for this property disregard ‘break period’ is to give someone time to either sell their home or consider setting up a deferred payment arrangement.
