Category Archives: Older care
Use left-over NHS cash to pay for elderly care, say MPs
Left-over cash from NHS budgets should be handed over to local councils to pay for care for the elderly and disabled, according to MPs.
By John Bingham, Social Affairs Editor
7:00AM BST 16 Jul 2012
A cross-party group of MPs and peers is calling on the Government to allow money allocated to health but left unspent to be used for social care rather than being simply absorbed back into Treasury funds.
They calculate that less than half of the current annual NHS underspend would be enough to solve the immediate funding crisis in social care.
The call comes in a report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Local Government, chaired by the Tory MP Heather Wheeler.
It comes in the week after the Government set out plans to overhaul care for the elderly.
Age UK response to Social Care White Paper
On Wednesday, the Government finally published its Social Care White Paper.
Source : Age UK
Published on 11 July 2012 01:00 PM
On Wednesday, the Government finally published its Social Care White Paper.
Age UK warmly welcomes the Government’s plans to reform the care system, although we are disappointed the Government did not set out how the changes will be funded and delayed the decision to the Comprehensive Spending Review expected next year.
If funding is forthcoming, today’s announcement is welcome news for the millions of care users now and in the future, and is something Age UK has been working towards for many years, most recently through our Care in Crisis campaign.
The main proposals for reform are listed below:
Improving access to social care
Introduction of a national eligibility criteria ensuring minimum level of support and continuity of care, portable between local authority areas.
Care Home Costs To Be Funded By State Loans
Plans to let the elderly delay care home costs until they die through the use of state loans are to be outlined by the Government.
9:53am UK, Wednesday 11 July 2012
By Thomas Moore, Health Correspondent
Pensioners are to be offered state loans so that they do not have to sell their own homes to cover the cost of residential care, under new Government plans.
People will be able to borrow money from councils at nominal interest rates to finance going into care and the cash would not have to be paid back until after they die.
The scheme, being introduced across England in April 2015, is intended to help around 40,000 people each year who are forced to sell their homes to cover care costs.
But critics are already attacking the strategy, arguing that families will still have to sell the property when their relative dies in order to pay back the loan and will also be landed with the interest.
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