Coldrick on Care Home Fees 2nd ed

Coldrick on Care Home Fees has long been regarded as the fundamental text for lawyers practising in this complex and rapidly changing area of the law.

With up-to-the-minute case law, precedents and advice, the second edition of this critical handbook promises to retain its deserved status as a must have on the bookshelves of all modern private client lawyers.

The second edition has been extensively updated and expanded to include:-

• The fees issues affecting self funders – new regulatory requirements with regard to contracts, a discussion of unfair contract terms and eviction
• The legal responsibilities of the NHS and local authorities to provide care
• Choice of accommodation and top up funding
• Challenging local authority deprivation decisions
• NHS continuing care
• Funding under S117 Mental Health Act 1983

The reasons for publishing this book

The original version of this work, entitled Protecting the Assets of Older People was published in November 2000 and revised in April 2002. Both editions focused upon the issue of protecting the existing capital of older people in the context of the increasing cost of long-term care.

Apart from the inevitable bundle of legal changes it became apparent to the author that a much more in depth approach was now demanded by the reader. The first edition of Coldrick on Care Home Fees represented a total rewrite with those needs in mind.

Now, some seven years later, the second edition of Coldrick on Care Home Fees has required yet further in depth exploration of this developing area. To make sense of and communicate complexity is the lawyer’s greatest skill. The authors have tried to follow the view of Ruskin that:-

“It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated, far more difficult to sacrifice skill and cease exertion in the proper place, than to expend both indiscriminately.”

Readers will be the judge of whether we have succeeded. Regrettably, however, some aspects of the subject do require patient consideration. To balance the inevitable loss of some of the simplicity of the original work, a sad result of practical necessity in an era characterised by a surfeit of regulation, it is hoped that the use of practical pointers and precedents compensates the reader.

The reader of this work is anticipated to be a professional person, a solicitor, other legal adviser, accountant or financial planner. They may be advising clients with regard to the potential future cost of long-term care or they may be advising those engaged in disputes with local authorities or the NHS over their present liability for fees.

The aim of this work

This work aims to assist those who are or may be in need of residential care to secure the best financial assistance legally available to them. It is hoped that this work will:-

• Ensure that the person in need of care „„is not financially prejudiced by a lack of understanding of the care system, their own responsibilities and those of local authorities and the NHS;
• Enable professional advisers to critique local authority decisions relating to residential care finance; and
• Facilitate the development of much needed services geared to the disabled and the vulnerable elderly.