What social services provide — and what home-owning families are left with when that is not enough

When a parent’s needs change — after a hospital stay, a fall, or a dementia diagnosis — the first call most families make is to the local council’s adult social care team. Every major UK information source points them there: gov.uk, Citizens Advice, NHS, Age UK. It is the right starting point. What follows is often unexpected.

What social services actually do

A social worker carries out a Care Needs Assessment — a statutory right under the Care Act 2014. The assessment looks at what your parent needs: personal care at home, day centre support, or residential care. It does not look at who will pay for it.

If residential care is needed, a separate Financial Assessment follows. This is where most home-owning families discover the position they are actually in.

The means test — and where home-owning families land

The Financial Assessment adds up all of a person’s capital: savings, investments, and — for residential care — the value of their home. In England, the upper capital limit is £23,250. In Wales it is £50,000. Anyone above that threshold is classed as a self-funder from day one. The council will not contribute to care costs until their assets fall below the lower limit.

For most home-owning families, the property alone takes their parent well above the threshold. The council’s role in funding care becomes, in practice, very limited.

This is not a failure of the system. It is how the system was designed. It is also — for many families — a complete surprise.

What the council will tell you at this point

Once a family is told their parent is a self-funder, the options typically presented are:

• Use savings and pension income until assets fall below the threshold, at which point the council may begin contributing.
• Sell the home to release funds for care costs (where the parent is moving into residential care and no one else lives there).
• A Deferred Payment Agreement (DPA) — the council pays the care home and recovers the debt against the property after death, with interest. Around 3,000 new DPAs are agreed each year in England. The majority are short-term arrangements to give families time to sell the property.

Families are also sometimes signposted to equity release or immediate needs annuities. These are regulated financial products, and families are correctly told to seek independent advice before considering them.

What is rarely mentioned

There is a fourth option that does not appear in standard public-service guidance, because it is a private service rather than a statutory provision or a regulated financial product.

My Lifetime Care runs the Care and Home Inheritance Plan — CHIP. It is not equity release. It is not a loan. It is not a council scheme. The structure is different: the family grants a lease on the home to My Lifetime Care; we manage the property and let it to tenants; the rental income and value of the lease pay the agreed care costs for as long as they are needed. The family retains ownership of the home throughout, and the home passes to them when the plan ends.

CHIP was founded by Jeremy Nixey, who previously founded Shaw Healthcare — the UK’s largest staff-owned care company. My Lifetime Care is owned by the registered charity My Respite Care (no. 1152941). Independent legal advice is required on both sides before any plan can begin.

CHIP is not right for every family. It works where the home has meaningful equity, where the family wants to preserve the property rather than sell it, and where the parent’s care needs are established enough for a plan to be structured. Whether it is relevant to your family’s situation is a conversation worth having — and only you, your solicitor, and your family can decide.

What to do next

If you have received a self-funder outcome and you want to understand what options exist before making any decisions, the most straightforward step is to speak with someone who knows the CHIP structure in detail.