What my dad’s care taught me about planning for later life

Andy Burnham has pledged to fix the social care system. It’s clearly a personal mission, driven by his own experiences, but he’s not the first prime minister to make that promise. When my dad first needed care in 2018, it was a year after Theresa May had announced plans for reform, and a year before Boris Johnson promised to solve the issue once and for all.

By the time he died in 2023, nothing had changed. Given that care reform has supposedly been imminent for the past 30 years, it means it’s worth hoping for the best but planning for the worst.

Support for social care is means-tested

In England, support for social care is means-tested. If you have assets of less than £14,259, the council will cover all your costs, and if you have less than £23,250, they’ll cover some of them. If you can stay in your home, or you’re only going into a residential home for a short period, your own home won’t be included in the calculation. If you’re moving into a care home, it is included, unless it’s also being lived in by your partner, your child under the age of 16, or a close relative who is 60 or older, or has a disability.

Some people will give assets away in an effort to qualify for free care. Some may even try to give their house to family members. Others will buy into schemes which put the home into trust, so it’s beyond the reach of the means test. Unfortunately, if the council decides you’ve done this to avoid paying for care, called ‘deliberate deprivation of assets’, it will include the gifts in the valuation of your assets, so you could fork out for a trust that proves worthless.

Even if the council is happy that you haven’t done this to avoid care costs, you could come to regret it – because they may not support the care you need.

Preparing for a care assessment

Before you get to the stage of the means test, you’ll have a care needs assessment, and the council will decide whether you qualify for any care at all. If you do, they’ll put together an outline of what it thinks your needs are, and how they’ll be met – known as a care plan. If they’re covering any of the cost, you’ll be allocated a personal budget. This is completely in their hands: you don’t get to decide what care you need.

In my dad’s case, he had a massive stroke, which damaged his movement so significantly that he couldn’t sit, stand or even turn over in bed. He couldn’t eat or drink safely and suffered from vascular dementia. His medical condition was so bad that care was covered by the NHS, who decided the level of support he needed and funded exactly that amount of care.

Once dad was home, gaps became obvious. There was no physiotherapy in the budget, which he desperately needed. There wasn’t a carer to support him having a shower, which was ironic given they’d insisted we build a wet room. He lived alone, so had a live-in carer, but there was no budget to cover a long enough break for the carer to sleep. Dad ended up paying an extra £3,900 a month for additional support.

Without these funds, there would have been no choice but for him to live in a nursing home. We know the impact that would have had, because he had to stay in one for a few weeks while we were building the wet room. During that time, he deteriorated dramatically – both physically and mentally, developing psychosis and paranoia that meant he was physically resisting staff who tried to help him. I’ve no doubt that having the assets to pay for care not only vastly improved his quality of life but gave him five extra years with us.

Considering how to pay for care

It’s why we all need to consider how we would pay for help if we needed it. The costs involved can make it difficult to build enough savings. However, if you have emergency savings to cover one-to-three years’ worth of essential expenses, then later in life it can help cover care for a while. If you’re making preparations early enough, you could consider investing, to give your money the best possible chance of growth over five to 10 years or longer.

Some people will ringfence money in their pension for care. If you intend to do this, it’s worth using a pension calculator to check that you can take the income you need and still cover the cost of care. If not, you may need to boost contributions. If you take this approach and you live beyond 5 April next year, there could be inheritance tax to pay on any that’s left over, because pensions will fall into the inheritance tax net. However, you may decide that this is a better risk to take than not having the money available at all.

There’s a good chance that many people will need to use the value of the family home to cover the cost. Some will try to rent it out, although this comes with risks and costs you need to think through carefully. Some will use equity release or use a deferred payment agreement with their local authority (where the care fees roll up and are repaid when the property is sold). Others will sell the home, which can be a cost-effective solution if they can face the prospect.

It's worth thinking through the options, talking to your family, and agreeing the approach that makes the most sense for you. You might think this kind of planning is unnecessary if politicians are actively working on a solution. Unfortunately, you could have thought the same thing 30 years ago when Tony Blair pledged to solve the broken system, and we’re still waiting.