A government initiated review conducted by Andrew Dilnot has concluded that social care costs in England should be capped at £35,000.
Under the current rules, those with assets over £23,250 are expected to fully fund the cost of care.
The Local Authority only picks up the tab when assets, including the value of property in some cases, falls below this threshold.
The independent Dilnot report argues for this threshold to rise from £23,250 to £100,000. Doing this would result in fewer people having to fund their own care fees.
He also recommends a lifetime cap on the cost of care fees at £35,000. This is a level he believes would be “fair” and would mean people were not faced with the prospect of losing all of their assets in later life.
To put this figure into context, around 1 in 10 people currently face lifetime care costs in excess of £100,000.
The proposed system would result in the person needing care being liable for the first tranche of costs.
Whilst these are sensible recommendations which will be hard for the government to ignore, the largest barrier to their introduction will be cost.
Making these changes to the adult social care system in England would cost the government in the region of £1.7bn a year if they were implemented now.
As a result of the ageing population, this cost could rise by as much as 50% when the baby boomer generation starts to retire.
It is unlikely that these proposed changes will happen any time soon.
Even if the government were to embrace the recommendations immediately, it could take as long as five years for these changes to be fully implemented.
In the meantime, funding care fees remains incredibly expensive and often the only option is to sell the family home to meet this expense.
We find that many people who need care in later life do not want to rely on the Local Authority to decide on the location and standard of their care home. Instead, they and their families prefer to be in control of these important decisions.
Photo credit: Flickr/Diego3336
