Yet more broken promises from Boris Johnson, a man who, over the course of his three-year premiership, has proved that he is unsuited to high office. In July, a key feature of his flagship reform to social care was delayed by 18 months. Its implementation would have given all residential care self-funders the right to pay care home fees at the same rate as local authorities, which is about 41% cheaper than their current rate.
The news will come as a knockout-blow to those self-funding families who breathed a sigh of relief when the change to the social care charging system was announced last September. Many, having already sold the family home to fund a parent’s move into a care home, will be nearing the end of the proceeds from the sale by October 2025, when this policy will now come into force, if at all.
When the social care reforms were unveiled last autumn, the sector warned that even with the 1.25% rise to National Insurance contributions, there was simply not enough government funding in the system to underpin the reform of a sector that had been starved of cash for decades. The government refused to listen and, as a result, has now laid to waste the careful calculations of tens of thousands of families up and down the country who may have watched every penny to ensure their ageing relative spends their last days in their care home.
Some adult children will be forced to find more cash to pay the care home fees, at the same time as they are dealing with the rising cost of living. Others may be forced to re-mortgage their homes to keep their parents in their care homes, which puts paid to Boris Johnson’s vow that no one will have to sell their home to pay for care. At worst, the delay of the policy could necessitate a move to a cheaper care home, in a new area, at a time in their parent’s life’s when moving away from their friends could hasten their demise.
This may sound like scaremongering, but between 2018 and 2019, 14 people a day spent all their savings paying for care, an analysis by Age UK showed. In that same year, self-funders spent £7 billion on care. We are four years on, during which time residential care fees have risen by 3% year-on-year, research by healthcare market specialists LaingBuisson suggests. Expect more self-funding families to find themselves in a similar position before this policy is either introduced or kicked into the long grass.
This is the second change to the social care reforms since they were announced last year. The first was the disregard of local authority help from the £86,000 cap on care costs. What is now becoming clear is that the compelling narrative that was sold to the public last September will look very different in reality.
