"Clear, friendly, helpful and proactive"

Unfortunately our mother, despite being in wonderful physical health for a woman in her mid-90s, had to move to a care home a couple of months ago.

For those who are not aware, finding a suitable care home is a far from straight-forward process - not just from the point of view of appropriate care, but mainly from the point of view of finding an available, affordable room. The social work team can guide you through the processes of health care assessment and financial assessment - resulting in the selected level of care required, and an allocation of funding support against a stated National Care Home Rate respectively.

However, many care homes will ask for the first two years to be self-funded. What they are less open about is that, for them, 'self-funded' does not just mean 'they expect you to pay the full National Care Home Rate from your own funds', as you may expect. It actually means they will charge a much higher weekly rate for care - often double the amount.

We fell into this trap and found ourselves in a situation where care home costs had already been incurred for a number of months, meaning our mother’s funds were greatly depleted and it appeared she could not afford to remain in the home at their 'self-funded rate’. Given the already daunting task of finding a care home would be even greater now she was less qualified to meet ’self-funded’ criteria, we were in a fairly desperate situation.

Fortunately, while scrambling for assistance, we were contacted by Tracey in the Perth and Kinross Council social work team. She was very clear, friendly and helpful from the start and proactively got involved with the care home discussions to seek a resolution to the situation our mother had found herself in.

As a result, we have now secured the room at this care home for the foreseeable future. This is in no small part due to Tracey’s dedication and helpfulness.