‘People don’t appreciate the high cost of social care,’ claims expert

THE DIFFERENCES between health care and social care in old age are still not widely understood, experts believe.

Yvonne Birks, professor of applied health and social care research at the University of York, said: “What people don’t understand is that social care is not the same as the NHS – it’s not free at the point of need. There is a series of assessments and people often have to pay for their own social care. People don’t really appreciate the cost of that.

“If you go into a care home, the cost can be over £1,000 a week, depending on where you are. Or you might need care at home, at £25 an hour, and even if you have modest savings, you can crack through them fairly quickly.

“When you run out of money, you become the responsibility of the local authority and that comes at a cost to them and therefore to the country.”

Prof Birks added: “In terms of national policy, you only really need to look at the current election to see that everyone’s talking about the NHS but no one’s talking about social care costs.

“The issue has been kicked down the road for years and years, while other governments around the world are taking it on and creating insurance policies and other ways in which people might think about how to fund their future social care costs.

“It’s a problem that’s only going to get bigger, because people are living longer with more conditions and more frailty.

“Increasingly they will have to be looked after by their older children who will probably be in their 70s themselves.”

Prof Birks acknowledged that while many people looked forward to their retirement, few wanted to contemplate their demise.

“Everybody just assumes it won’t happen to them until it does happen. By then they have often already hit a crisis point, so their decision making isn’t always great,” she said.

Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation thinktank, also said retirees needed

“clarity” on what level of care they would be expected to pay for themselves.

The organisation believes funding by local councils should be governed by national policy.

“We need to have more centralised funding going into the system so that people can make sure they do get care when they need it,” Mr Bell said.