Deadline Looming to Reclaim Entitlement to Care Home Fees

If you are a loved one have been paying for your own care since 2004 you may be entitled to make a claim for some or all of these costs to be refunded to you. The pivotal decision depends on many factors but in essence, many people have been paying for their own care when it should have been that assisted them. The way in which assessments are carried out changed in 2007 using different criteria for assessment.

The Government has opened up this claims appeal as there was concern that those elderly people with serious medical and nursing need were wrongly assessed and had to pay for the total cost of care themselves.

Because of the sheer volume of claims being made upon the government now they have issued a deadline for new claims to be submitted of 30th September 2012. Access to free continuing health care on the NHS needs to be tested rather than means-tested, this essentially means that if someone qualified on the ground of their health and medical needs it would not matter if they had assets of not as their care should be funded for free from the NHS.

There are many people who felt that they or their loved one were incorrectly assessed at the time they entered residential care and as a result, failed the needs test for free NHS continuing healthcare. In the interim, they have paid many thousands of pounds in nursing care fees. The ability to make an application for a review now in retrospect could result in the repayment of fees.

Depending on where you live will depend on how long ago you are able to claim for example if you are in England you can claim back fees from April 2004 onwards, Wales you can claim back fees from April 1996 onwards, but from 4th December 2009, you can only claim back fees from April 2003 onwards. In Northern Ireland, you would not be able to claim back fees retrospectively.