We know that older people who fund their own care can have a very different experience than people who receive publicly-funded support – what’s it like to be a self-funder, and what could we do differently?
Although the way care is funded differs across the four nations – a significant number of people with care and support needs pay for their own care.
This is because, in an under-funded and very pressured system, publicly-funded care increasingly tends to focus on people with very significant needs and with low incomes/savings. If we are not careful, the result is that almost anyone else is left to make their own arrangements as best they can, in a system few people understand and most people aren’t ready for.
According to Simon Bottery of the King’s Fund: “I often talk about the fact that you’ve got to be a pole vaulter to get over the barrier in terms of needs, and you’ve got to be a limbo dancer to get under the assets barrier.”
The evidence
We worked with the University of Birmingham’s Knowledge and Evidence Service to look at the evidence around expectations self-funders have of receiving care, the realities of arranging care, what self-funders and their families know about the care system, the skills they draw on and the support they might need, and finally (some) things that might help.
Other resources
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