Mick

I am not in anyway trying to justify the policy of the social care issue and 'Dementia Tax' as people are calling it.

Having worked in the health care sector, it costs a bloody lot of money to put someone with Dementia in a care home that is setup directly for people with the disease. You are talking in some homes, £700, Per Week. These fees are not set by government, as a lot of care homes are run privately, they can still be capped at local level, i.e depending on CQC inspection reports, if it is seen that a home is not running a top notch service, social services may only agree to pay so much, basically some landlords, with no care experience, buy these homes and hire staff to manage them, all they care about is filling the voids.

Now in a ever increasing older people population, the amount of the older generation that needs care is increasing to unsustainable levels, the government says in the future there will be 2 Million more older people requiring care, £700 per week, per person with dementia is a lot of money for the state to cough up.

When my Grandma was ill with dementia, almost 22 years ago, my dad fought tooth and nail to get her in to a care home, she ended up in hospital and she had a series of bad mini strokes which then started killing off parts of her brain, so was later diagnosed with Multi-Infarct Dementia. She lost the capacity to care for herself, I was summoned one day to the A and E dept at my local hospital and, basically, my gran was just wandering in all the other cubicles, she then went in one of them started pulling down her underwear and started urinating on a chair, it was very upsetting to see and I could not deal with it and asked someone to please help her.

However, the next day, with her having absolutely no capacity to help herself, the hospital sent her home, which was only a Warden controlled complex !!! My father who worked full time, had to literally stop his life to care for her for a while, which my Grandma, had she been able to have the capacity to make an informed choice, would never have wanted that to happen, so she ended up in a Respite care home, but she did not live long after this and in a way, this was a blessing because she never recovered, she never got better and we had actually lost the person, we loved just 6 months prior to this, it all happened really fast to be honest. But what I am trying to say is, some kids care about what they can get after their parents pass away, it never really crosses my mind, I never think, that house my parents live in is mine or part of it is etc.

But some people are unable to stop their lives and they still have to work and make that horrible choice to place their parent in a care home, I saw the guilt in my dads face when he had to make that choice but he had to make that decision and some of my Grandma's assets had to pay for her care, the threshold was a lot lower then, like anything over £3,000 and people had to pay for their own care.

So I can see why they are doing it, but it's how they have gone about doing it.