Category Archives: dementia

Continuing Healthcare: deadline looms for 'secret' care fund

August 19, 2012   Carers, dementia, Older care

The little-known NHS Continuing Healthcare benefit can help the most vulnerable, but with the clock ticking thousands of people could forfeit backdated payments

 

If the main reason for a person going into a home is ill-health, they should be eligible for Continuing Healthcare, which means the NHS covers all the costs.

Time is running out for many of Britain’s most vulnerable people who are struggling to pay crippling care bills and could be eligible for several years backdated funding from a “secret” NHS scheme. If no one acts on their behalf before the end of next month the right to retrospective payments going back to 2004 will be lost.

Every year thousands of family properties are sold to enable mainly elderly people to meet the costs of their care. But if the main reason for a person going into a home is ill-health they should be eligible for the virtually unknown Continuing Healthcare, which means that the NHS covers all the costs, including accommodation. There is no ceiling on the amount that can be paid out, there is no means test and it is not age-related.

Anyone who is successful in claiming on behalf of a loved one could be entitled to have the payments backdated to April 2004, even if their relative is no longer alive. But applications must be submitted before 30 September.

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Dementia patients given right to say on end-of-life care

August 16, 2012   Carers, dementia

People in the early stages of dementia are to be given a right to have a say in how and where they want to die under guidelines for medical staff and social workers.

 

Dementia patients given right to say on end-of-life care

By , Social Affairs Editor

7:00AM BST 16 Aug 2012

New draft guidelines drawn up by the NHS watchdog Nice will require local authorities and health trusts to give people diagnosed with dementia an opportunity to discuss options for care at the end of their life as early as possible while they still have the capacity.

It follows research showing that only a tiny minority of people have communicated their wishes for how they would like to be treated if they were terminally ill.

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Dealing with Dementia: 'My dad was treated like lost luggage on a carousel'

August 15, 2012   Alzheimer’s, Carers, dementia

Special report: When her father was diagnosed with dementia, Arifa Akbar embarked upon a journey through an abusive and negligent care system. In the first of a four-part series on the illness, she asks why, if we’re all living longer, we still treat long-term sufferers as though they were the living dead

My father turned 81 in May, but in a weary mood he will insist he is anywhere between 85 and 150. Sometimes he thinks he is living in a submarine off the shores of Norway, other times in Shimla, India, where he was born, or Lahore, where he was raised.

In reflective moments, he looks up to the ceiling and says it’s going to rain, as if he can see storm clouds gathering there. He tells me his father is watching him from the other side of the room, pointing to the small shaving mirror, at his own reflection. When he’s agitated, he shouts for hours at a time.

There are periods when he is lucid and warm; he’ll tell me that I need to eat more, get more sleep. “What’s the name of the newspaper you work for?” he’ll ask. Then, as I’m about to leave, he’ll say, “Am I dead? Did you bring my death certificate?”

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