NHS Continuing Healthcare Funding
Why solicitors specialise in NHS care home funding
If you need ongoing care in relation to complex physical or mental health needs, your care fees may be paid by the NHS. This is known as NHS continuing healthcare.
Unfortunately, Primary Care Trusts often make arbitrary care funding decisions. As a result, you may not receive NHS funding for care in a residential care home, nursing home or in your own home, even if you are eligible.
Cate Searle, one of the country’s leading NHS care funding experts, has successfully challenged many NHS care funding decisions over the last 10 years. In one case she reclaimed nursing home fees of £90,000 and she regularly saves families up to £1,000 in weekly care home fees. Read our case studies.
For NHS continuing healthcare advice see Cate Searle’s Accessing Continuing Care Funding Factsheet, watch our video below or call Cate on 01273 609911.
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Who is eligible for NHS continuing healthcare?
If you demonstrate a primary health need, the NHS must pay for your care in full, regardless of your personal wealth. To qualify, you must demonstrate your needs are:
- Complex, intense or unpredictable and
- Not incidental or ancillary to the accommodation your local authority is under a duty to provide or
- Not of a nature typically provided for by a social services department.
Challenging NHS continuing healthcare decisions - our fixed-fee assessment
There are many reasons why NHS care funding decisions may be wrong. If you have been denied funding and are paying for your own care, you may be able to reclaim your nursing home fees through a legal challenge.
Our confidential and sensitive consultation will help you understand if your case is strong enough to proceed. This initial expert consultation costs £150 (plus VAT). In one client’s case, the fixed-fee consultation and an expert letter alone were enough for them to reclaim £60,000 in nursing home fees.
If your case cannot be resolved at this stage we can:
- Prepare detailed representations
- Manage the entire challenge process
If you are retrospectively claiming nursing home fees, we can often manage this on a no-win no-fee basis. Where nursing care fees are still being incurred, we will give you a comprehensive assessment of your case, the prospects of success and the likely cost.
If you would like to know more about the grounds for challenging a NHS continuing healthcare decision, see Cate Searle’s Challenging Continuing Care Funding Decisions Factsheet.
Challenging a funding decision retrospectively
If you believe a relative who has now died was wrongly paying for care, you may be able to bring a retrospective review for NHS funding. Our NHS continuing healthcare team has a lot of experience bringing successful retrospective cases.
Because this is such a specialist area of law - but little understood even by many solicitors - we also train probate lawyers to understand eligibility issues when dealing with the estate of someone who was in care.
Want to talk to us for NHS care funding advice?
If you would like to talk to us about NHS care home funding email Cate Searle or call your local martin searle solicitors’ office on 01273 609911 (Brighton) or 0208 256 4490 (Croydon).
