Interview - Chris Horlick

It is going to be very difficult for the White Paper to be too drastic. And, as Horlick pointed out, full adoption of the Dilnot reforms as stated would be dramatic and radical. 

But some things might emerge, as Horlick explained. “Moving the means-testing threshold from a ‘cliff-edge’ £23,250 (including your home – that’s ludicrous) to a graded £100,000 – I think we can well see that in the White Paper. But the bigger funding challenge – the billions of pounds required – is dependent on achieving some success in the core NHS reforms.” 

A problem COVER has previously highlighted is that councils don’t know how much they spend on long-term care.

More than 60% of them have no idea what they spend, never mind what their future costs may be.

Most have no interaction with the people in their homes, basically taking their money until they have only £23,250 – sometimes less because people don’t flag it, and then start paying.

So can anyone sort the system out? Horlick, as we would expect, has a degree of sympathy with local authorities.

“They’re in a pretty tough place. They’ve got to take 28% out of their budgets over four years.

“For nearly every local authority in the UK – certainly in England – the biggest single area of discretionary spend is on older people. They spend huge sums on a tiny proportion of the population. That is clearly challenging because they are there to serve the whole population.

“If you are taking 28% out of your funds, clearly the area where you spend the most money is going to get hit. What we’ve seen is the eligibility criteria tightened.
“I think it is unfair to say they don’t know how much they’re spending. They clearly set a budget. The problem is when you’re setting a budget, you don’t know how many people are going to fall, have strokes, and so on.”

“The tragedy is that people, having sold their homes to fund their care, then run out of money because they don’t get good financial advice. And there are plenty of advisers out there with specialist care qualifications who can help people under those circumstances.”

So what’s the magic bullet to ignite this market? After all, it is still in the doldrums if only £100m of a £5bn market is being advised on.

Horlick is clear: “Clarity on what the government will pay for, on what the individual has to pay for. I believe that all institutions offering social care, or care and support of any sort, should be compelled to advise any self-funders, to get some financial advice about how they can do that. 

“Care homes, domiciliary care providers, especially local authorities, they should have a duty to do this. So it’s clarity and information and advice.”