The Social Care White Paper seeks to set up a National Care Service (NCS). However, even if Labour wins the next two elections, it will take at least 5 years to conduct a proper examination of the funding options and delivery of a NCS. This means that many of the people entering residential care homes in the next 4 years will have died by the time a NCS is established.
These people urgently need care funding advice now. This issue is significant with 130,000 people entering residential care homes in England each year, of which 41% or 53,000 people are wholly self funding. Of this number only 7,000 receive proper financial advice about how to fund their care needs.
And this does not include the 20,000 co-funders or the hundreds of thousands of people who require domiciliary care.
As the ageing population rapidly grows IFAs will continue to provide vital specialist financial advice, although as a consumer you should ensure that you seek out an adviser that is appropriately qualified, holding the CII CF8 qualification, or similar.
