This photo shows war hero James, 89, being evicted from his care home after a row over fees. Months later he was dead. And his story is shockingly common...
The day Mick Carr had his 96-year-old mother elsie admitted to a care home was the worst of his life.
elsie was suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s and Mick had tried valiantly to care for her at home for six months. But he was no longer able to cope.
Sitting in his car outside Breton Court residential home in Tenterden, Kent, the 70-year-old retired printer wept.
In his overwrought state, it was perhaps no surprise that Mick paid little attention to the small print of the contract he had signed with the care home. Yet he certainly wishes he’d done so now.
For, like countless other people, he has fallen foul of the exorbitant fees charged by homes caring for Britain’s elderly.
These charges, which can run to tens of thousands of pounds, may even be for ‘ notice periods’ after a loved one has died. In other words, the care home resident was expected to ‘give notice’ of their impending death, a practice that has been described by MPs as ‘profiting from people’s misery’.
In other cases, families have been billed huge sums in error or fees are sharply increased, with their frail and vulnerable relatives facing eviction unless they pay up.
The scale of the problem is such that the Competition and Markets Authority has launched an investigation into the financial practices of the country’s £14.3 billion care industry. The watchdog is concerned that homes may be breaking consumer law by charging large ‘ opaque’ deposits, and will be examining cases where fees are collected after someone has died.
For families like the Carrs, the investigation can’t come soon enough.
elsie, a widow with two children, two grandchildren and three greatgrandchildren, had lived alone in Ashford, Kent, since the death of her husband, former RAF groundsman Jack, in 1994.
She had Alzheimer’s diagnosed in 2014 and within six months was no longer able to live safely on her own, so she moved in with her son Mick. When her condition worsened and she was no longer able to recognise him and tended to wander off, he began to look for a care home to meet her needs.
After looking around five homes, he chose Breton Court, impressed by its kind staff and beautiful gardens.
he visited his mother twice a week until the evening of November 8 last year, when he received a phone call to say she had passed away.
The very next day, he and his sister Janet began clearing out their mother’s room, packing away her clothes and dozens of family photos, including the one of Jack that she kept by the bed.
Mick began organising her funeral and contacted the home to ask them to return his mother’s £ 3,000 deposit, in the hope it would cover most of the costs of the ceremony.
he was stunned to receive a reply saying the money would not be returned, as elsie was being charged for a twoweek notice period after her death.
‘To me it is grave robbery,’ Mick says. ‘I could understand paying for one or two extra days but not 14. It’s just terrible. You are grieving, then you are hit with this financial blow.’
After being contacted by Mick’s solicitor, the home eventually refunded £1,045 of the total bill, charging the family ‘just’ £2,731 for the two weeks after his mother died. In total, elsie paid the home a staggering £114,000.
‘She worked hard for most of her life in various jobs, including in a department store,’ says Mick. ‘She paid for her care with her own money, then she dies and they want more?
‘The day I put her in there I didn’t go through the small print. If I’d read that clause, I would have asked for it to be deleted or we would have left.’
Breton Court did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Incredibly, these controversial ‘notice periods’ following a resident’s death can be as long as a month — as 83- year- old Clive Card’s family discovered to their cost last year.
Clive, a former tanker driver who suffered from dementia, had only been living in oatlands care home in South London for a matter of months before his death last November. he passed away on November 1 and his family cleared out his belongings the next day, so his son Tony was staggered to receive a £ 3,342 bill demanding payment for the whole of the month.
Tony admits he was aware of the four-week notice clause in the contract when he signed it, but says when he questioned what that would mean in the event of his father’s death, the home told him not to worry as they would ‘sort something out’.
‘I felt we were very vulnerable and needed help, so they just reeled us in,’ says Tony.
The family had self-funded father-oftwo Clive’s stay at the home, with his 83-year-old wife Freda using £7,000 of her savings to pay an advance.
‘We queried the bill but they started putting pressure on us, saying we had signed the contract, so in the end we paid it. We just didn’t have any fight left,’ says Tony. ‘But I don’t see why they should profit from somebody’s death. If they rent out his room they will get double, effectively sub-letting my dad’s paid-for room.’ oatlands claims the notice period is ‘ in line with most tenancy agreements’.
In a statement, manager Roy Jawaheer said: ‘We recognise that emotions surrounding the death of a loved one may alter relatives’ subsequent understanding of the contract. however, we refute any suggestion that the family of Mr Card were “ripped off”.
‘A care home is a business where, according to regulations, we have to plan staffing, supplies, utilities, maintenance contracts, etc, a month in advance. When a service user dies we are not able immediately to reduce our outgoings, and would suggest that in no other sector would there be such expectation.
‘We are kind and caring people who did our utmost for the client and his family when they were most in need.’
In some cases, families are wrongly charged huge sums while their loved ones are still alive. War veteran James Bryant, who worked at Nazi codebreaking centre Bletchley Park during World War II, was evicted from his care home after his family were wrongly charged £17,000.
James, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s, had been a resident of Roebuck Nursing home in Stevenage, hertfordshire, since 2011. his £800-aweek care was funded by the State, but this was called into question following the death of his 89-year-old wife evelyn, a former dinner lady, in December 2013.
Problems began when the care home
learnt that the couple’s four-bedroom terraced house in Stevenage was to be sold.
It assumed this would mean James’s care would no longer be provided by the NHS and he would become self- funding. However, as James was eligible for ‘continuous care’ (whereby his ongoing needs were considered serious enough to receive full funding), this was not the case.
The first his daughter Janet Marshall, 61, a retired graphic designer, learnt of this was when she made her daily visit to see her father in January 2016 and was handed an envelope containing a backdated bill for £17,000.
The family hired a solicitor and were eventually successful in challenging the bill, with the home later apologising and admitting its mistake. Sadly, this backtracking came too late.
James had been given a month’s notice to leave and was evicted in March. He was placed in another home and died just eight months later, aged 89.
‘every time we went to visit Dad we were harassed for money,’ says Janet. ‘It made our lives a misery and marred our final days together. I think Dad knew what was going on, as he still had lucid days. It caused him great anxiety to be moved and definitely hastened his death.’
The family complained to the Local Government Ombudsman, which concluded that the nursing home was in the wrong.
But regardless of this retrospective victory, Janet believes the system is fundamentally flawed, as there is no protection for families who are wrongly or unfairly charged.
‘We have a broken system of care in this country,’ she says.
and when it comes to the growing crisis in the care industry, it is middle-class families who are paying the price.
In the UK, about 430,000 elderly people are in care homes, which are predominantly run by private companies. However, unlike other industries — such as energy firms, which are regulated by Ofgem — there is no body responsible for overseeing the financial propriety of the sector.
‘at present, it falls between the Care Quality Commission [which oversees standards of care], the local authorities and consumer law, but nobody in those three is directly responsible for making sure people get a fair deal,’ says Ray Hart, who runs the business Valuing Care, which negotiates fees for local authorities and families.
as care homes struggle with rising costs caused by both an increase in the minimum wage (from £6.70 in 2015 to £7.50 today) and caps placed on the amount local authorities are prepared to pay, many are putting up fees for self-funding residents, forcing families to stump up more cash or move relatives to other homes.
Those who self-fund already pay higher rates than those paid for by the State — as much as £10,000 a year more in some cases.
This means not only that those middle- class families who are self-funding are effectively subsidising the care of those who aren’t, but that they are also at the mercy of price hikes, as this is one of the only ways homes can raise more money.
The essex home caring for blind 87-year-old Tony Parkins, a retired stationer, has increased its fees by almost 14 per cent in two years. Tony’s son Ian must now find an extra £150 a week or move his father out of the anisha Grange home in Billericay.
‘Dad was very distressed and anxious when he heard about the price rises,’ says Ian, 53, who runs an investment company. ‘I assured him he could stay but I don’t know how sustainable it will be if the prices keep going up.
‘There’s no regulation for this type of thing. The care they provide is regulated but what they charge isn’t.’
Aspokesman for anisha Grange, which is part of Hallmark Care Homes, said: ‘While we cannot comment on individual fees, we can confirm that we carefully consider any increase in fee rates, taking into account external factors — such as increases in wages, pension contributions and regulator fees — as well as the need to invest in staff training and our care facilities.’
Professor Martin Green, of trade body Care england, says it is unfair to blame care homes for raising their prices.
‘It’s not care homes that should be getting a kicking. The social policy of how to look after people who have health conditions in old age is a complete mess.
‘Care homes are not trying to make a quick buck. If you look at how much local authorities pay for care at the moment, it can be £2.31 an hour. extra costs are being put on care homes that should be the responsibility of the Government.’
For Mick Carr, this simply isn’t good enough: ‘It’s just not fair for care homes to do this. It’s exploitative and something needs to be done to stop this happening to anyone else.’ Additional reporting by
STEPHANIE CONDRON