Care home fees and the unregulated market

One of the most visited articles on my website is “Asset Protection Trusts – appropriate or dangerous?” It is still the case that the issue of meeting the cost of care fees, when applicable, can mean the loss eventually of the family home. Take a local family, where the wife was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s Disease – she spent 8 years in a nursing home to which the NHS Continuing Care system would not contribute. It cost her husband £400,000 in care fees before she died. He had to take out bank loans against the family home to meet some of these costs as all savings had been exhausted.

However, there continues to be much ignorance and poor behaviour connected with the sale of ‘schemes’ to reduce the risk of something similar happening to other members of the public.

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Recently, I was approached by the Money Box programme on Radio 4 to help with an enquiry from a listener on this issue. The podcast of the programme is worth a listen and informative – it may be something you would like to share with clients. I do not know how long the link will work but here it is: The Care Fee Trap.

There is also an online piece written by the reporter Michael Robinson which accompanies the programme and this can be found here “Trying to avoid care home fees? Think twice, consumers told”.