I had her accounts… That’s it, they gave me an account. So there’s two ways of doing it; you can let the council sort it out or you can ask for money to be put into this account, and that’s right, I had to monitor, I, they had to monitor this account. So I had a separate account which was for my mum’s care, so they told me to open a bank account which was separate for my mum’s care and then they used to have to pay, they used to pay the money into that and then I used to pay the care bills from that, it’s coming back to me now, and then they had to audit it every, every so often; I had to send the bank statements and the bills and stuff to make sure I wasn’t, like, creaming the money off for something else.

The assessments, yes, the financial assessment, now Joe’s money was down to the, below, it was well below by this time that, what they suggested. So out of that came the fact that Joe pays, you know, so much from his pensions, I had to sign an agreement, or somebody had to sign an agreement for, to make up the difference from what social services can pay, because they have a set amount, don’t they, that I don’t know whether it’s the same with each council or not, or whether councils work out their own, I’ve not really found that out because I don’t know anybody in care in any other counties, but this was [County] County Council. So there was so much that, a week that they would fund and if you went into one of the homes they would fund it completely but there wasn’t anywhere near here that had a place that I felt he would be happy, because when he first went into the home he could still move about, he could still walk, and like there was a room up a stairs and had to be a lift, he wouldn’t have had his independence, whereas for a few months he could walk still. It soon went because he then had another episode in hospital when he was in for two weeks and, with pneumonia, and they couldn’t get him out of bed, and he never walked again after that, so. He would have been all right in another room but you can’t change, I felt I couldn’t, he’d got, he’d got settled there and I couldn’t change him.

Finance department of [County B] County Council and they were lenient in the way that they did their calculations. She got around £80,000 for her flat and that, which stayed in a, in an account so she, basically she paid monthly for her care until it dribbled down. And it did, actually 3 years was about right, till it dribbled down to the £23,500 when we had to have another meeting to see whether she could stay where she was.

But there was a lot of nervous tension when her money got down to the level where she could no longer completely self-fund; and they put you through a few hoops and there was a great deal of anxiety on our behalf that if she couldn’t stay at [town D] where was she going to go, or were we going to pay top-up? And that left a bit of a uncertain feeling in terms of whether… because there’s… I didn’t want to put any timescale on this, I was not looking to, that my mum as being a, ‘oh she’s only going to be here for 6 months’ or whatever, as long as she’s able to get some enjoyment out of life that was really the issue. So we thought long and hard, I guess, you know, if we did this, did that, yes, we could, don’t really want to; so that was the conversation I had with them.

And I got a phone call one Friday afternoon saying, “She’s got it.” So that was a huge relief, and then from there on her income dwindled down from the £23,500; we never got to the point where I think £11,000, or thereabouts is when you don’t pay anything at all. So she was contributing to her care costs, and in fairness to [name of care provider] the, I saw no difference in the way that they looked after her once the financial situation had changed, and nor would I have expected there to be; for them she was one of their patients and they all deserve the same level of care and I think she got that.

And I went all the way round to just about every home in [town B], which apparently has the highest concentration of old people’s homes outside of [town C]; and I only found one that I thought was OK; and when they found out how much mum had in the bank they basically said, “Oh we can’t take you because it’ll be a local authority case.” I notice that they didn’t do that in writing, but anyway.

So, sorry, I don’t understand; so what, because she was below the threshold?

No, they said that she had about 5 months’ worth of funds and after that she would be local authority and they wouldn’t accept that. I don’t know why; must be some stigma or whatever, but…

So they want to know that you, if you’re going to self-fund they want to know that it’s going to be for as long as it needs to be?

Yeah, no, I got the impression that they didn’t want anything that involved funding from the local authority.

I think actually I could have rung the Alzheimer’s Society, but I, for some reason I knew that Age UK had got specialist advisors that you could ring that would give you information and they were, they were wonderful. I could not get clarity from either end but what they told me was correct, they sort of said, “No, you must move her now, before her funds run out, because,” they say, “if you move her now there’s no set time period, but if you move her to [name of South county] she will become what’s termed a normal resident, when she becomes a capital depleter she will then apply for a financial assessment from [name of South county] County Council and it will proceed on that ground,” she said, “if you wait until she is becoming a capital depleter in [name of North town], once [name of North town] Council take over responsibility for her payments in her residential care home, if you move her then she will remain [name of North town] responsibility.” [name of North town] are paying £460 a week, I think this is the cheapest room I found which I was happy with but it’s £750 a week, so you’re talking about a big difference.

But the manager that was there when I was looking at care homes, I actually told him that she would become a capital depleter about 6 months later, because social services, rightly this time, in [name of county], had told me that when I’m looking at care homes make sure I select one that does accept social services funded residents, which was, again was important to know, because there are one or two, I think, luxury ones here that cost a lot of money and that I think they, they only take self-funders. So, so yes, he knew. He didn’t so I think I think as I remember it I actually said within about 6 months, which, and it was, it was almost exactly 6 months, that she would be applying for social services’ financial assessment, because I have heard of other care homes when they yes, they ask for proof that you can self-fund for a year, for example, as a period before they will accept you. So no, that, this particular care home, that wasn’t a problem, no. So they said they had got some residents there that were funded by social services.

And had that not been the case or had you not known to ask that question there could have been a risk that you would have had to move again?

No, definitely, yes, no, definitely. No, that was, that was certainly a question that; did I actually ask it or…? No, when I asked advice from social services on finding an appropriate care home and they actually did volunteer that information, because they sent me to a link on their website, which has got all the care homes and you could see their the reviews, you know, the Care Commission reviews that they’d had on that and everything; and she actually did say that, “Yes, just make sure that when you’re contacting them you check that they do accept social services funding.” So they did, yeah, they did volunteer that information, yes, and it was very important to know that.

And, and this was exactly what the social worker said, right, at the end of this interview, she sort of she said – and these were her exact words – she said, “So the social services pay £615 a week so that would leave £135 a week top-up.” As though that was, that was it, you know. So then I sort of brought up my-, I challenged it on the basis of the 2014 Care Act and, and I said, and I said, “I was very careful to look at other care homes, I’d disregarded some,” I said, “I don’t think you’ll find a cheaper room in [name of town A].” And she immediately said, “No, you’re probably right but we can get a cheaper room in [name of town B].” [name of town B], I don’t even know [name of town B], it’s down, it’s, I think it’s a more deprived area actually; but it wasn’t so much that – because if you’re in a care home she’s not really going out – but it’s like, for example, every Friday I take my 3 year old granddaughter and we call on the way back from her ballet class every Friday, I wouldn’t be able to do things like that if she was down in [name of town B]. So, so I sort of said this, and so I said to her that I knew that they had to give at least one option that met this needs and moving her to [name of town B] would not meet those needs, because it’s a bit like, well she’s a parcel we can just move her to [name of town B] because it’ll save us X amount of money, and so, and again it’s like the bullying thing. I said to her, “And so if you don’t agree to her staying here I will be appealing on that basis and,” I said, “make no mistake I will appeal.” And I think she knew I meant it, you know, I was, and I would have done. So that was that, and that’s just what I’m saying about it’s the system, not the individual. Because then we went up to see the manager, because she wanted to ask the manager whether there would be any negotiation, would, whether they would reduce the fees, because she’s then backed off from me, and she said, “Oh well we’ll go and talk to the manager and see if they’ll reduce the fees.” And as I said to her, “But why would they because, you know, they’ve got to make ends meet, why are they just going to suddenly say oh now social services are paying we’ll make it cheaper?” “Oh sometimes they do,” she said. And so we went up there. Anyway they wouldn’t because I’d already, I think it was quite a good rate compared to other care homes, a lot of care homes you are paying £1,000 and I think some of the newer rooms there they’re £1,000 as well. And so the, I remember the social worker then said to her, “Oh when I took this job I didn’t expect it to be all this about fighting about money.” So that’s why I don’t blame that individual social worker because it’s probably a horrible part of her job, but that she is obviously told to put it that families think this is it, we’ve got to top up and families feel guilty because they think OK, my parent’s going to get moved somewhere if I don’t agree to pay this, but that’s not actually the case. They don’t tell you that the Care Act is actually in legislation that they’ve got to offer at least one option that meets physical, social and emotional needs, and if you can make a case on that they’ve got to prove otherwise.

Well what we, what we thought was that this money was my dad, it’s my dad’s money obviously, and the only, he has no, he has nothing to spend it on other than his care, so we were totally happy for all of his money to be spent on his care, which would be better for him in that it would mean that the annuity would need to fund less of his total care package. But we had quite we had quite a specific, we, yeah, it was a very specific amount we wanted to cover, so we had a, we had that goal in mind when we set it up; then there wasn’t a lot of, well you could do this or you could do that, we knew exactly what we wanted. Because I think our, as I said before, our biggest fear was that we wouldn’t be able to afford to keep him at the care home if his money ran out. The care home were quite helpful explaining that that might not necessarily happen, that the mechanism might be that they would have to go to the local council to try and get them to help fund it, and this is often what happens, but it can be quite a long process and it can be quite what was the word they used? You know, it can get a bit heated; and actually we didn’t, we just didn’t fancy that, we didn’t want to get into a situation where we were sort of having to haggle over dad’s you know, staying in his care home, basically, so yeah.