How you arrange to pay your care home fees is dependent on your circumstances. If someone’s going into a care home who lacks capacity, the payments to the care home can be handled by someone with continuing power of attorney. There are various methods of funding long term care and these will come in the form of either publicly or self-funded.

In some cases, local council support may be available to help fund care fees, and this is dependent on the amount of capital you have. If you’re assessed as having capital above the upper capital limit of £27,250, you won’t get help from your local council with paying care home fees over and above any assessed entitlement to free personal and nursing care. This is often referred to as self-funded. If you have capital below the lower limit of £17,000, you’ll get help with care home fees. This is known as publicly-funded. In between these figures there is a phasing in of local authority support with costs.

One of the main concerns for many of our clients is what will happen to their home if they require long term care. If you are the owner, even if you have a mortgage on your home, your home is treated as a capital asset unless it’s disregarded and will be used as part of the calculation to determine if your care should be publicly or self-funded.

If it has been determined that you should self-fund your care, but you don’t want to sell your home straightaway, your local council can offer you the opportunity to enter into a Deferred Payment Agreement (DPA). A DPA means the council will pay for your care until your house is sold, at which point the council will recover the amount you owe.

As specialists in funding long term care, we are here to help you navigate through the different options and choose the one that is most suited to your needs.

The purpose of this website is to provide technical and generic guidance and should not be interpreted as personal recommendation or advice.