The £53m a Year Question

Beyond death, taxes and your uncle being certain the Manxman is top heavy, there are few guarantees in life, but what you can bank on your family being someway reliant by the care system.

It could be you, your mum, your dad, your marine engineer qualified uncle, but someone you know will either end up in a care home or requiring support at home, but that leaves on big question, who should pay for it?

To help determine this, the gov has launched a consultation aimed at getting feedback on the proposals.

All of this is relatively simple for those of you with a PhD in rural bus timetables or quantum mechanics. Gef has neither, but he is a very clever mongoose, so here goes it.

Currently, the system works like this, fees range from £555 per week to £1,338 (just remind your dad of this if he ever complains about how much you going to uni cost, it turns out that was a bargain).

Because of this, it leaves families in a bind as the majority of the burden for social care in the current system falls to the individual or their fam, with only those eligible for income support receiving state-funding.

Currently, care costs about £53.6m a year on the island and 84% of that is met by the people needing care or their families, with costs expected to double over the next 20 years.

Under the present arrangements, the gov just can’t afford to meet rising costs, nor can it afford to just switch the care system to free at the point of delivery.

Scotland or Jersey?

As such, there are basically two options being put forward right now for the Manx public to debate, Scotland or Jersey? That doesn’t mean we’re sending your gran off to Glasgow or Saint Helier btw.

The Scotland model is actually pretty straightforward:

In SNPland, free personal care has been available to adults aged 65 or over since 2002. This has since been extended to adults of any age who are assessed by their local authority as needing this service, no matter their condition, capital or income. Free nursing care is similar and is available to all who are assessed as requiring nursing care services, regardless of age, without charge.

That means that things that involve a qualified nurse, such as injections and the like are free, but help with housework, laundry, shopping etc, aren’t.

In this model people’s accommodation, daily living costs and any non-personal care needs are paid for by the individual. However, there is means-tested support available towards those costs.

If the island was to introduce this, the gov says its contribution towards the cost of care would rise from 16% to 58% to support people over 65.

Jersey

Our friends in the Channel have a mixed model which is focussed on providing financial support for people with lower wealth, whereas those with higher wealth have to pay more.

However, it also allows people who have contributed towards the cost of their care are able to protect some of the assets they have rather than selling the family silver to pay for their or a family member’s care.

The two main forks of this are a capital threshold, which is set at £419,000 in Jersey and a cap, which is the maximum amount that someone should pay towards care in their lifetime, being £67,000.

If the island was to go down this route, a new long-term care benefit would be available to everyone to cover the cost of their care, but people with assets above a certain amount (the capital threshold) would have to pay some of their care costs before they become eligible for the benefit.

Currently there is no cap on care costs on the island and it is estimated that the average cost per year is £40,000 to £50,000 a year.

The maximum amount that someone should have to pay towards the cost of their care over their lifetime would be set within the proposed mixed model with the public’s views on what is fair for someone to pay before they are entitled to free care will be collected as part of the consultation.

As a comparison, England has proposed a cap of £86k but has not yet brought it in.

Costs

The cost of bringing in this model to Government and how it will affect the costs to individuals varies depending on where the capital threshold and lifetime cap is set.

Setting the capital threshold at £100k would slightly increase the percentage of the costs covered by the Government (from 16% to 19%) and similarly decrease the percentage of the total cost that is paid by individuals needing care (from 84% to 81%).

However, how the financial support from Government is allocated to people would change. For example, there would be more support provided towards care provided in a person’s own home and less support provided to cover people’s accommodation and daily living costs in a care home.

Setting the capital threshold at £280k and £350 would mean that people are able to keep more of their assets for themselves and would not be required to use them towards the costs of their care. This would mean that the cost to Government would increase.

Setting the capital threshold at £280k would increase Government’s contribution towards the total cost of care from 16% to 37%. Setting the capital threshold at £350k would increase Government’s contribution towards the total cost of care from 20% to 40%.

Get Involved

The consultation can be found here.