helping seniors live well in later life

033 3014 7053

Tag: Later Life

  • Getting Care At Home

    Getting Care At Home

    So, you’ve decided that the best thing for your loved one (or you) is to get some help with care at home.  It could be help with meals, or with personal care, cleaning or companionship, or a mixture of all of these things.  If you have more than £23,250 in savings you have to pay for the care yourself.*

    We’ve noticed that lots of people seem to think that those providing care at home are expensive, intimating that the extra costs involved rather than privately paying a carer, aren’t worth the money.  Here are some things we think are worth thinking about when considering the options:

    Employing someone privately means you are responsible for sick pay, holiday pay and finding cover when they’re not there, as well as finding the right person in the first place through adverts and interviews, and then getting employment contracts set up.  You might need to find cover at short notice when it isn’t practical to do so.  The carer should also set up a care plan for your loved one (or you) but the practicalities of the time they have might mean this falls by the wayside.  In short, you might be lucky, but the legal, financial and practical responsibilities can be onerous.

    Using a care agency means that you have a management point of contact to sort all sorts of queries and concerns that you may have.  They are responsible for training staff and ensuring all legal protocols are covered for compliance and best practice.  They will make sure a care plan is in place and regularly reviewed.  They also have insurance and will provide any cover for holidays and sickness and ensure their carers are paid.  They can inform you of changes to legalities relevant to your situation.  They also often put on seminars for family members, such as dementia awareness sessions and other relevant information.

    If you are not sure if care at home is the right thing for you, then we can put you in touch with https://eldercareconsultant.co.uk/.   We can also help you with agency recommendations in your area.

    (Note reforms are due to come in in 2025 and you can read more about what this means financially here:  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/build-back-better-our-plan-for-health-and-social-care/adult-social-care-charging-reform-further-details)

  • Choosing your attorneys

    Choosing your attorneys

    Last week we talked about the importance of powers of attorney.   So if you have decided you want to make them, you need to think about who might be the best attorneys for you*.  Some of the following might help you to decide:

    • They don’t have to be your relatives or your children.  Even if you have relatives and adult children, it’s your decision as to who should be your attorneys.
    • These are not permanent decisions; you can replace your attorneys later.  You can either put replacement options in the original forms, or you can redo the forms later.  If you redo them it will attract another fee by your solicitor and the Office of the Public Guardian where they get registered, but if, like me, your attorneys are all older than you, you will know that at some point you may need to change it. 
    • You don’t have to have the same attorneys for both health and welfare and finance.  You can have different ones.
    • The attorneys don’t have to act together (or they can) so you can decide how to structure this depending on how you think your attorneys will get on with each other.
    • You can pay your attorneys to do the job, and so you can pick people who are professional attorneys.  Solicitors will often take on the finance side of being an attorney.  At One Stop Organisers we can also do this in some cases for people who are already our clients and who we have worked with before.

    If we can help with suggesting solicitors to help you or your older relatives with the forms, do get in touch.

    *A power of attorney gives one person legal power to act for another person and the person acting is then called an attorney.

  • Power of Attorney

    Power of Attorney

    Have you written and registered your power of attorney yet?  We have done ours and many people might think we’re too young.

    But you’re never too young; it doesn’t matter what age you are, if something happens to you and you can’t make decisions, then life can get a bit tricky.  People often think that they are giving up their independence by appointing attorneys, but it doesn’t need to be like that.  It’s just there so when things start to get difficult, you can get some help from the people you trust most. 

    Your appointed finance attorneys can make decisions with you before you lose capacity, just to assist and make your life easier.

    The health and welfare attorneys can only make decisions for you if you have lost capacity.

    It is much easier to fill in your forms before you need them, and if you need to discuss this with a solicitor then we can recommend firms that can help you. 

    Next time we’ll talk about who to appoint as your attorneys.

  • Passports and identity

    Passports and identity

    Passports are not just for trips abroad.

    They are a very useful piece of ID and, if possible, make sure you keep yours renewed even if you don’t think you’ll be travelling soon.

    We have seen many cases recently of our clients needing to prove their identity to banks and this is often the only ID that can be accepted especially if you have stopped driving.  Without it we’ve seen clients locked out of their own banking, even in branch, as they cannot prove who they are when something has gone wrong or when a fraud flag has been placed on their account. 

    If you are moving home soon you’ll need to prove your identity to your solicitor and this will be the easiest way.  There are many organisations that are inflexible when it comes to ID requirements and keeping your passport renewed can take the stress out of things as you don’t always know you need it until you do.  

    And don’t forget, you can use it as ID for voting since there are now requirements for ID at polling stations.  There is now of course a special voter ID you can get if you don’t have a passport, and other items you can use like your freedom pass or blue badge.  You can of course always apply for a postal vote if going to the polling station is too stressful.

    If you or a loved one need help doing the online passport renewal (or new passport) application, we would love to help.

  • When should you downsize?

    When should you downsize?

    There is never a good time to downsize.  Many of our clients wish they’d done it much sooner, but acknowledge they probably thought they were invincible 10 years earlier.   So when you do it is up to you.  But the younger you are the more energy you’ll have to do it.  As specialists in downsizing parents and grandparents we can help and assist with small and large tasks, or project manage the whole thing. 

    Things to consider are:

    • Finances – freeing up money to top up pension or pay for care
    • Energy bills and excess rooms  – don’t pay to heat a home that you don’t fully use  
    • Household maintenance including gardening – both financially and physically this can become a drain
    • Health needs – these might need to be paid for or a move might simply help accommodate a health problem
    • Being nearer family for support (both ways) and companionship

    You can read more on our previous blog.