Author Archives: wendy
Will people save within a Premium Bond to pay for their long term care
Care bond pitched as LTC funding solution
Blueprint suggests a model similar to premium bonds to encourage saving for potential long-term care needs
Funding for care has crept further on to the agenda in the past few years off the back of the Dilnot commission.
But even with a cap on care costs, many will struggle to pay the cost of care should it become necessary.
A new product pitched by Cass Business School, in conjunction with the International Longevity Centre UK, aims to ease the burden of paying for care in addition to incentivising people to make provision for themselves.
Personal care savings bonds (PCSBs), proposed by Professor Les Mayhew and Dr David Smith of the business school, would work in a similar way to premium bonds in that they would pay monthly prizes, free of tax, which could either be claimed or reinvested.
Unlike premium bonds, however, they would accrue monthly interest and could be purchased by any adult at a nominal value of £1 each.
They could only be cashed when the owner passed a social care assessment or died.
Mental health nurses to patrol streets of North Yorkshire with police
The county is one of four revealed by Care and Support
12:00am Thursday 27th June 2013 in News By Matt Westcott
MENTAL health nurses will patrol the streets with police officers as part of a pilot initiative in North Yorkshire.
The county is one of four revealed by Care and Support Minister Norman Lamb today and will see the nurses sent to incidents where police believe people need immediate mental health support.
Street triage services already operate in neighbouring Cleveland and have shown good results.
Protecting older people with a disability from living in poverty
New research on attendance allowance says more should be done to support those receiving the benefit
Attendance allowance (AA) is a weekly cash payment to older people with disabilities by the Department for Work and Pensions, worth between £59 and £73. It is a contribution to the extra costs of living with a disability and rarely, if ever, receives any discussion in policy debate. This is odd given the scale of the AA – it is paid to around 1.5 million older people in the UK at a cost of around £5bn each year.
To bolster the evidence base on AA and explore how we can make better use of it, the Strategic Society Centre and Independent Age recently published some new research and policy analysis.
Analysing data from the government-funded English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, we found that most people receiving AA are female and aged over 80. The most common difficulties with activities of daily living experienced by recipients are dressing (including putting on socks and shoes) and bathing or showering. Over half are unable to do work around the home and more than 40% have difficulty shopping for groceries.
