Heard about care caps? Care accounts? Minimum threshold? You will do soon!
Employees Matter speaker and care specialist, Lorna Easterbrook, explains how changes to the Care Act will affect your staff.
From April 2015, the Care Act 2014 brings major changes to the system of accessing and paying for care and support for everyone over the age of 18 and their family carers in England.
From next April, many more people who need care and support (and their family carers) will be able to get a local authority assessment, following which the local authority must give information and advice about:
- What to do next
- What they might receive
- Costs (including how to get financial advice about paying for care);
- What to do if you don’t qualify for state support.
To qualify?
Your assessed needs must meet a new, national, ‘minimum threshold’ about your ‘well-being’, defined by the Act to include dignity, where you live, and how you spend your time.
And the means-test?
Two upper capital limits (the level below which your capital and savings must fall in order to get help with funding) will be introduced, varying by whether or not the value of your former home is included in the means-test. That’s from April 2016, when final changes including the ‘care cap’ come into effect. This is the maximum you pay over your lifetime for eligible care. Note that word ‘eligible’ – the point at which your assessed needs meet the minimum threshold. Any care you buy before reaching that point won’t count. This maximum will differ by age. For those meeting the threshold at 18, the care cap will be zero; £72,000 for those first meeting the threshold at 65 or older; for other adults, the figure is yet to be announced – more than zero, less than £72,000.
It’s a lot of change – and it’s rapidly approaching!
Contact us to organise a seminar to keep your staff informed.