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Healthcare benefits

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Hi,

I am looking to understand what financial and healthcare assistance my 84 year old mother is entitled to.

Until recently she has been living alone in her small terraced home which she owned outright and has been using an equity release mortgage to supplement her pension for living expenses. She doesn't have any savings or assets apart from her home.

Over recent years she has found walking difficult, she describes her legs as wobbly, but she was doing OK around the house and with a carer popping in a couple of times a day she was self sufficient enough to wash, dress, cook, eat etc. She had a few falls but nothing too serious. She was showing signs of short term memory loss, but not too serious. She always knew who was who and had no time displacement.

Almost two months ago she had a series of illnesses: flu, chest infection, urinary tract infection. It all seemed to knock her for six. She fell at home and couldn't get up and found herself extremely weak. After a few days she was taken into the local community hospital.

She became despondent. After a week or so in the hospital she got up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet and fell and broke her hip.

She's now had a hip replacement and some recuperation and the hospital have said they want her to move out next week. Her mental acuity has dipped, and for the last three or four weeks she has done nothing. She just sits and reacts to people, but has no interest in doing anything. She used to be an active book reader, now she has no interest in anything.

The hospital staff have said, verbally, that they do not think she is safe to live alone (nor do I) and have suggested a local residential home. So the ball has started rolling and in literally the last three days we have found ourselves arranging for her to go to the residential home and sell her own home so she will be able to pay the ~£700/week it costs to live there.

Once her house is sold and the equity release mortgage is paid off I estimate that she will have enough money to pay the fees for a few years, perhaps 5-8.

She has lived in the UK all her life and worked as a school teacher paying National Insurance etc.

When she is asked now what she would like to do and whether she is happy to go to the residential home she just says 'I'll go where you want me to go'. She doesn't have much more of an opinion than that. I still think it's possible she has some form of depression. Personally I don't think she is safe to live alone any more, which is very sad but the reality has to be faced. I also don't really think she is ever going to get well enough to be safe to live alone, although I fear that without a proper written diagnosis we are making very big decisions very quickly.

I want to understand what sort of financial assistance she should expect and how we should go about getting it for her. Is it just a case of burning through the proceeds from the house sale until she has less than £23,500 and then applying for benefits from the council? Is she entitled to a carers allowance when she lives in a residential home? I know that before this happened she had intended to leave a good chunk of money to her grand children with the hopes of getting them onto the property ladder. She's beneath the inheritance tax threshold, but is she still allowed to give money to her grand children? (e.g. the inheritance tax allowances - £3000/year to a single person, £250/year to whoever she chooses) or is that in some way illegal because the council wants her to spend all of her money on residential care before she runs out of money and presumably in some way they start to pay?

Lots of questions and a very long post. I'd appreciate any knowledge you are able to share on how to ensure that her money is spent as wisely as possible and we are able to get her as much additional healthcare as she needs from the NHS. For instance I've heard a term called 'Continual healthcare', is that something that could apply to her and benefit her?

Thank you,
Jill

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