When a person requires residential accommodation, a local authority care needs assessment of their finances is required in order to determine how the accommodation will be paid for. With the costs of care home accommodation ranging from £575 to £900 per week on average, it is not surprising that the rules relating to charging cause much controversy.

The following discusses the rules in Wales for charging for care home accommodation. Although similar, there are separate rules relating to charging for care home accommodation in England. More...

When you or a relative needs to move into a full-time care home, the change in situation can be difficult enough without having to worry about cost. Care home fees can run into the hundreds of thousands, putting a huge amount of pressure on families under strain.

To help reduce this additional burden, Howells Solicitors has put together a 10-minute guide outlining the various ways to pay for care, as well as explaining instances where fees can be reclaimed and how to do this.

Who Pays Care Home Fees?

Usually, when a person requires residential accommodation, the Local Authority will assess their finances in order to determine how it should be paid for.

If a person has capital over £24,000 (Wales) and is not eligible for NHS funding they are considered ‘self-funding’, which means they have to pay the full cost of their care.More...

The Welsh Assembly Government has set a deadline for claims for the refund of care home fees paid between 1st April 2003 and 31st July 2013 to be made. The deadline is 31st July 2014.

Any person who has been contributing to the costs of care home fees from either their income (including state pension or other benefits), or savings, between the above mentioned dates may be entitled to a full or partial reimbursement. The law says that if the primary reason for being in a care home is because you have a health care need rather than social care needs, the full cost of your care and accommodation should be paid by the NHS.

In Wales, Health Boards are regularly being forced to repay millions of pounds to care home residents and/or their families. Howells Solicitors have acted for some of these families and recovered huge amounts of wrongly paid fees.

For further information on the services provided by Howells Solicitors, check out our specialist elderly client solicitors. More...

Every year, hard-working people who have strived all their lives to pay for their family home are seeing their hard work count for nothing, as their homes are sold to meet the cost of care in later life.

Research shows that half of women and a third of men will require some form of long-term care. It is this, in some cases the exorbitant cost of residential care, which means thousands of people are unable to pass their family home down to their children.

What happens to homeowners entering a care home?

If you own your home the local authority will not count it as capital until you have been receiving residential care or living in a nursing home for 12 weeks. After this point, your home will still not be classed as capital if any of the following still reside there: More...

The family of former Cardiff-resident Frank Green, who owned a famous toy shop in Canton for over 20 years, have been able to claim back care costs from the NHS after a recent claim through the team at Howells Solicitors.

Mr Green, who served in World War II and ran the toy shop SF Green on 295 Cowbridge Road afterwards until 1969, became increasingly ill after retirement and moved into care homes in Llandough, UHW and Whitchurch hospitals. There, the authorities made no assessment for his ongoing care and informed his family that any care fees must be funded by them. The family used Mr Green’s savings and sold his home to pay for his care in the final years of his life between 2003 and 2007.

Informed by the Coughlan and Grogan cases, in which families of seriously ill people were able to claim compensation from the health authorities if they were wrongly charged with care fees, our solicitor Alison Huggins worked with Mr Green’s family to reclaim the care fees they paid. More...