We had to sell our family home to fund Mum’s £8,000 a month dementia care: How you can stop your assets being swallowed up too

Hayley Garratt-Milne watched her mother Carole work tirelessly for years to buy a family home for her and her sister.

A single mum, Carole had saved every penny from her job as a hairdresser and bought the four-bedroom house in Isleworth, west London, in 1988, where she brought up her two daughters.

So Hayley, 43, was heartbroken the day she realised she would have to sell that home, full of memories, to pay for her mother’s care fees.

Carole, now 72, became ill with dementia at just 65 and very quickly needed round-the-clock care. 

But with little savings and a baby on the way, Hayley and her family struggled to afford the fees for her mother’s care in a Surrey care home, which started at £6,000 a month.

Hayley says this led to the council having a legal claim put in place on her mother’s home.

She said: ‘Mum had a house in London, but she didn’t have any cash. So, Surrey County Council put a charge on her property, and then we were forced to sell it. It was really stressful.’

Now, shockingly, despite paying that huge sum, Hayley says she is still having to do a lot of the care herself, as she fears for her mother’s safety in the home.

In one terrifying ordeal, Hayley says she arrived to see her mother choking while nursing home staff stood by watching. ‘They were just standing there and nobody was helping her,’ she says.

The Daily Mail has launched a major appeal to fund a pioneering support network for unpaid dementia carers as a damning poll revealed two-thirds feel abandoned.

Dementia Carers Together will deliver nationwide six-week courses for friends and relatives of those living with the disease.

Delivered with Alzheimer’s Society, the sessions will give carers vital support and information about their rights and services available. There are 2.5 million people in the UK who provide some form of care for people with dementia.

The Garratt family are victims of Britain’s care lottery, which means that some families can have care for their loved ones fully funded, while others must sell properties or run up huge bills simply to keep family members safe. 

An estimated 37 per cent of care home residents are fully self-funded, while others receive a contribution towards the costs from the NHS or their local council.

The NHS offers full funding for people requiring ‘continuing healthcare’ with complex care needs, which is not means tested and can cover those with dementia.

This includes the entire cost of a care home or home carer visits, which can run into thousands of pounds a week.

But families are losing out because of flaws in the system. Many miss out on tens of thousands of pounds in care costs because of incorrect assessments over dementia cases, experts have warned.

Many residents – over a third, according to a recent survey by annuity providers Just Group – fund either the whole bill or a part of it through proceeds from a property sale.

Carole receives partial funding for nursing care, but it hasn’t brought down the personal cost. As well as monthly fees, there are always extras.

‘If she needs her toenails cutting, that’s £25 extra. If she needs shower gel, we have to provide that,’ says Hayley. 

Price of dementia  

Caring has been emotionally challenging for Hayley, who says her mother was a smart, funny, sociable woman who worked hard.

‘We used to call her Margaret Thatcher because she was just like the Iron Lady,’ recalls Hayley.

Understandably, selling their family home was a terrible wrench.

‘I had to deal with the emotional side when I was heavily pregnant. That was a very stressful time because we had to clear out our family home. We had lived there all our lives.

‘I don’t think you should be forced to sell your family home to pay for care.’

Sold for £715,000, the proceeds were expected to cover around ten years of care fees.

Carole has now been in a home for five years. During that time, the fees have risen from about £6,000 a month to just over £8,000.

At this cost, the proceeds from the sale of the family home would last less than seven-and-a-half years.

‘She will have no money left,’ says her daughter.

Like many families, Hayley applied for continuing healthcare funding for her mother, which would have covered all the bills, but was turned down, despite the fact that Carole needs help with ‘almost everything’. 

Continuing healthcare eligibility depends on the person’s overall health and care needs, and these are assessed by a multidisciplinary team of professionals.

Between April and December 2024, 15 per cent of completed local reviews and 24 per cent of independent reviews resulted in the person being found eligible.

A 2020 report by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman found serious failings in how continuing healthcare decisions were made, with people paying large sums for care the NHS should have funded or going without care because decisions were wrong or delayed.

Hayley says Carole has been assessed twice but rejected both times.

‘She doesn’t meet the criteria, we’ve been told, even though she’s doubly incontinent, she’s had gangrene and she can’t walk on her own.

‘She went down to 6½ st and can’t feed herself. She can’t do anything – she can’t even communicate. But she still doesn’t meet that criteria.’

The families of those with dementia find it particularly hard to get the funding, says Lauren Pates, senior knowledge officer at Alzheimer’s Society.

She adds that many of the symptoms which typically affect people with dementia – such as cognition, communication, psychological and emotional needs, and (in a lot of cases) continence and nutrition – don’t carry a priority weighting for receiving the funding.

A report by Nuffield Trust found that there was also a postcode lottery for the funding, with people in some areas of the country six times as likely to receive the funding as people elsewhere.

A cruel burden

Prime Minister Andy Burnham previously called selling your home to pay for care a ‘cruel lottery’ and has promised that his new National Care Service would be ‘free at the point of use’, give people ‘peace of mind’ and ‘protect people’s homes and their savings’.

Burnham, who has praised the Daily Mail’s new campaign, also said older people would no longer have to pay care charges out of a basic state pension.

While the new plan should cover help with eating, bathing and using the toilet, it would not cover accommodation and meals (‘bed and board’), and those costs would remain means-tested, meaning some would still have to sell properties.

Hayley says she’s sceptical about whether the proposals will make a difference, while she is also worried about the quality of the care that is currently being provided.

Even with the £8,000-a-month fee and the care home having an outstanding rating, she says she does not feel Carole is safe.

She is compelled to check on her often because she feels she can’t trust the care staff to do the best for her mum. 

She says she has seen terrifying scenes when she has arrived to visit her mother in the past.

On one occasion, she discovered that her mother had been given a double dose of medication and become violently sick. 

On another, she was by herself vomiting blood, and there was also a situation where staff were forcing her feet into trainers, despite the fact that she had developed gangrene on her heels.

Hayley has moved Carole to a new care home once – but this hasn’t stopped the problems from occurring.

‘She’s paying a fortune but it’s out of the frying pan into the fire,’ she says. ‘You can’t really guarantee that anything else is going to be any better.’

The stress of caring is taking its toll.

‘I feel like I am hitting my head against a brick wall all the time,’ says Hayley, who is pregnant with her second child and due to give birth in three weeks.

‘I work full-time. I’ve got a child, a husband and a house to maintain. I’m juggling a lot.’

Lacking support

Hayley says she believes families who have no choice but to pay for care themselves are left to navigate the system without adequate support.

‘When my mum was overdosed and there was a safeguarding issue, she was not allowed to return back to the home. But because she is self-funded, there was zero help. I was on my own,’ she says.

Hayley now has some support from a local hospice team, which she says has been a ‘breath of fresh air’.

After Carole was placed on end-of-life care following a bout of aspiration pneumonia, Hayley says a hospice doctor spent

two hours discussing what should happen if her mother became ill again. While the hospice has provided a lot of support, there is no space to have Carole full-time.

Hayley says she was told that people living at home are given preference for hospice places because nursing homes are expected to provide that care.

After her mother returned to her nursing home, Hayley says that’s where she once saw her choking.

‘The staff did nothing,’ she says. ‘Even though she’s on end-of-life [care] and end-of-life medication had been administered, they were just letting her choke to death. 

Nobody was helping her. If her care home is an outstanding care home, I would dread to think what a poor or inadequate care home would be like.’

n How have you been affected by the cost of dementia? Email moneymail@dailymail.co.uk

The ultimate guide to fighting for funding

Families can face care-home bills running into thousands of pounds a month if someone has dementia or other issues – but several schemes may help with the cost.

There are four main ways that care is paid for other than out of the individual or family purse. They are not interchangeable and can be combined in some cases.

Someone can be self-funding or receive council help and still qualify for nursing care, for example.

Here’s a guide to some of the ways that you can get help – and appeal if you are turned down for funding.

If you are in the early stage of finding care for a loved one, the first step is to ask the local authority for a care needs assessment and a financial assessment. Everyone will need the care needs assessment, regardless of finance.

Local authority help

The local authority can carry out a financial assessment to decide if it will pay for a care home.

In England, a financial assessment looks at the person’s income and their savings, investments and, sometimes, property. This is known as ‘capital’.

For 2026/27, if the capital exceeds £23,250, the person will usually have to pay the full care-home bill.

If it is between £14,250 and £23,250, the council may contribute, while the person pays from income and is treated as having £1 a week for every £250 of savings above £14,250.

If savings are below £14,250, they are not counted, although the person may still have to contribute from income such as their pension.

Someone’s home can count as capital if they move permanently into a care home. But it is not automatically included: for example, it is usually ignored if a spouse or partner, or certain qualifying relatives, continue to live there.

The council may also ignore its value for up to the first 12 weeks after a permanent move.

Ask the council to explain in writing whether the home has been included and why. 

If it is counted, you can ask about a deferred payment agreement: this lets the person delay paying some care costs, with the council usually securing repayment against the property for later.

Attendance allowance

Even if your family member is not eligible for local authority support, Attendance Allowance can help with the cost.

This is a non-means-tested benefit for people who have reached state pension age and need help caring for themselves or supervision for their safety because of a health condition or disability.

The need must generally have lasted for at least six months, unless special end-of-life rules apply. It is paid at two weekly rates, depending on the level of help needed.

For 2026/27, the rates are £76.70 or £114.60 a week. The payment can help with extra costs arising from care needs. To claim, apply to the Department for Work and Pensions online or by post.

Someone in a care home can usually continue to receive Attendance Allowance if they are paying the full fees themselves. It is generally not payable when the local authority is paying for the care, and it can stop if NHS continuing healthcare funding begins.

For a better chance of success, complete the Attendance Allowance form with everyday examples.

Describe the help or supervision needed because of the person’s condition, during both day and night. 

Give concrete examples: what the person cannot do safely or reliably, what another person does, how often help is needed and what happens without it.

Nursing care

Some families, such as Carole’s, are eligible for nursing care funding from the NHS.

This is for someone living in a nursing home who has been assessed as needing care from a registered nurse but is not eligible for the larger funding pot for continuing healthcare (CHC).

With nursing care, the NHS pays a standard contribution directly to the home towards the nursing element of the care. The resident or council remains responsible for the rest of the bill.

In England, the standard rate is £267.68 a week for 2026/27. This payment is not means-tested and can apply whether the person is self-funding or receiving local authority support.

Continuing healthcare

If your family member is deemed eligible for CHC, all care will be paid for.

It is not means-tested and assessors look at the nature, intensity, complexity and unpredictability of a person’s needs, including what risks arise if care is not provided. However, the application process can be very stressful.

Dan Harbour, who runs CHC advocacy group Beacon, says: ‘It’s a nightmare, complex process, and when people are affected by it, it takes over their lives.’

To apply, contact the integrated care board (ICB) responsible for the area where your relative lives or receives care and ask for an assessment. In most cases, a healthcare professional completes an initial checklist.

To maximise your chances of success, Andy Machin, whose mother’s CHC claim succeeded after three appeals, advises: ‘Start by keeping a diary as early as you can, document everything and make sure you check relevant evidence against the criteria for receiving CHC. 

You’re looking for consistent and relevant evidence and you should state the needs even if they are currently being managed by care.

Around 17 per cent of CHC appeals succeed on average. If the support is refused, ask the ICB to explain its decision and how it considered the person’s overall needs. If you disagree, use the local resolution process.

Set out what was missed or described inaccurately in the decision letter. If that does not resolve the dispute, you can ask NHS England for an independent review panel. 

The final route is a complaint to the Public Service Ombudsman.

A specialist advocate may help interpret the decision documents, organise evidence and prepare for a meeting or appeal. Ask about fees, experience with CHC reviews and exactly what the service includes before committing.

Start with advice from Beacon (beaconchc.co.uk), which offers a free helpline and claims that around 70 per cent of clients using its paid advocacy service succeed.