Leading care home review site launches free advice guide on care home fees

The leading care home review site in the UK, carehome.co.uk, has launched a free guide for people looking for a care home and wondering how to pay for it.

When a husband, wife, parent or grandparent needs to go into a care home, their family are often forced to make huge emotional and financial decisions in an extremely short space of time. The whole process of looking for care can be arduous and extremely complex and many embark on the process with no idea of how much a care home costs and how to get a care needs assessment.

Law firm Irwin Mitchell has found that advice is so scarce that Brits are more likely to ask friends and family about care home fees, with over two-thirds admitting they don’t know the average annual cost of a care home. A third said they ask a search engine on the internet and 14 per cent do not know who to ask.

To fill this information gap, carehome.co.uk now has an extensive care home advice section on its website, with a spokesperson saying: “We decided to create a resource that would help people in their search for a care home and aid them in making informed decisions about the type of care they need. We also have detailed guidance on what financial support they can access and valuable advice on what benefits they are entitled to.”

This valuable resource gives advice on how to fund your relative’s care, helping you decide if they are eligible for state-funded care or whether they will have to fund the care themselves. There is vital information on benefits such as Attendance Allowance, which many don’t realise they are entitled to as well as Funded Nursing Care and Continuing Healthcare Funding. In addition, the resource includes a whole range of ways in which people can pay for their care if they are self-funders.

As well as funding, the guide helps people in their search for a care home with a free PDF checklist that can be downloaded and taken to the care home, giving them ideas on what to look for and what to ask.

In order to find out what care and support your relative needs, you can get a care needs assessment and all the details on this are also in the guide. There is a list of organisations if you need to make a complaint, as well as relevant charities and local authorities.

To read carehome.co.uk's advice guide click here.