I’ve written a couple of versions of this post, about a subject that’s quite personal for me at the moment. Let’s just say that it concerns social care and the cost of it. In summary, if you’re unlucky enough to be affected by dementia or Alzheimer’s, have amassed some savings in your lifetime and haven’t acted to “protect” them from the State, then the State is going to come after you to pay for your care. They will demand to see bank statements, investments, divestments, savings and anything else that they see fit to request. If they feel that you have knowingly tried to move money in order to avoid paying for a relative’s care, you could end up in jail. It’s serious stuff.
I know from reading forums that plenty of people feel that this is fair enough – if, in your dotage, you have the cash to fund a plush care home, what better way to spend it? Especially if you don’t have kids, or likeable relatives, or a favourite charity, to leave a financial legacy for. Choose somewhere you’d like to live and pay for it.
The costs are quite breathtaking when you face the reality of them. For a standard, council care home, you’ll be looking at finding between £700 and £800 a week to stay there, of which the State will pitch in around £200 for as long as you have financial assets to cover the difference. If this is the case, then the remainder of the bills will be funded by you, until you’re down to your last £16,000, when the State will step in to pick up the charge. From your pension, investments, savings, sale of your house, whatever, you’ll be finding and funding around £500 a week. And you’ve pretty much no idea how long that is going to go on for. One year, five years, ten years, more? The way medicine is going, they’re able to keep YOU going, whether you want to or not, for a long time.
If you want to scare yourself witless about a potential future, take a stroll around the nearest dementia ward local to you and ask yourself how, in God’s name, the country is going to be able to afford to look after the legions of poor souls who’ll require round the clock care in the near future? Yes, the big idea is to keep people at home for as long as possible while pumping in community care teams to “look after” their needs. It wouldn’t surprise me, however, if this is even more expensive than caring for someone in a home. The cost of it all is mind-boggling.
When you consider the amount of people who have no pension other than that which the State will provide; when you consider the average amount of savings people have in the bank; when you consider – if you can – the cost of looking after a person twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, plus their medicine, plus their emergency call-outs, their wheelchairs, zimmers, adapted homes for living, the medical teams required for support, the falls team, the social workers, the ambulance service, the heating bills, the solicitors, the GP’s, the administration….look down your street. How many people in their houses are going to need care at the end of their lives, One, two, ten? Then multiply your street up to imagine your village, town, city and country.
I don’t know about you, but I’d be prepared to pitch in a couple of pence more on income tax if it would guarantee secure care for our elderly. As a community this is surely the right thing to do. My only reservation is that the money would soon be squandered and wasted hand over fist, but what’s the alternative? We’ve got to do something.
Of course, maybe because of my recent personal experience I’m worrying about a potential future of my own that I don’t particularly want to fund out of my own savings if I can help it. And maybe there’s a truth to that, and maybe I feel a bit guilty about it because I was brought up to not break the financial rules, nor even bend them. You paid your way, fairly and squarely, that was how a caring community was built. Everyone contributed what they could, or at least that was the ideal.
The way the health service is going, it’s obvious that the money it will require is way more than a small number of individuals can shoulder. We’re all going to have to contribute more, as a massive public insurance against an uncertain future. There may be a myriad of ways to approach this, politically, economically and socially, but fund it we must as we venture – a lot more slowly – toward the dying of the light.