COMPLEX AS MY NUCLEAR DETERRENT WORK
RETIRED Rear Admiral Philip Mathias says applying for NHS continuing health care funding was “as complex as my work on the nuclear deterrent”.
He spent two years fighting for the help his mother Joy, 88, was lawfully entitled to. But the Alzheimer’s sufferer died in September 2018 – hours after Wiltshire Clinical Commissioning Group ( CCG) agreed it would fund her ongoing costs.
By that time, his father, then in his 90s, had spent more than £ 200,000 on her care.
Philip, 62, of Southsea, Hants, who worked as nuclear deterrent policy director, said: “In terms of complexity, the mental capacity required and the analysis skills needed, [ it] was as complex as some of the nuclear deterrent policy I worked on. If someone with my experience and expertise found the process so difficult, my concern is that many people... will decide it is not worth the stress, especially if they are also elderly themselves.”