Scams & Scandals in Social Care
It seems everybody’s doing it and not just politicians. In doing the research for my novel, The Laughing Robot, I explored a number of the scams that are currently taking place in social care for older people. These scams can happen, sometimes between families, sometimes by carers and sometimes with so called professionals. A review of the growing frequency of financial issues raised in Safe Guarding Panels is another. On Radio 4 19.9.25, Money Box recently looked at the Trust schemes being sold across the UK to people who are being misled into paying thousands of pounds for Trusts or similar products. They are told these will protect the value of their home from inheritance tax or being taken by local authorities to pay for care home fees. A recent survey by the Association of Lifetime Lawyers’ (formerly Solicitors for the Elderly) revealed that 95% of their members surveyed said that they had seen such products being mis sold.
For years, glossy seminars and cold-callers have been promising a simple fix for care-home fees: put your house into a special “asset protection” or “family” trust and—abracadabra—it can’t be counted in the means-test. Recent warnings from the Association of Lifetime Lawyers say this “miracle fix” is being oversold—often by unregulated outfits—leaving families both poorer and unprotected. The reality is that local authorities can (and do) look back at past ownership and motives. If avoiding fees was the purpose, the trust is likely to be ignored. These trusts are commonly pushed by non-regulated firms and can cost thousands—often £2,000–£8,000 up-front—before ongoing admin and tax issues. Families are left with messes to fix with clients trapped in defective trusts, surprise tax bills, and blocked property sales—costly to unwind and no help in a means-test.
The care-funding means-test is governed by the Care Act 2014 framework and statutory charging rules. If you deprive yourself of assets—for example, by gifting or settling your house into trust—with the intent to reduce what you pay, the council can treat you as if you have deliberately deprived them of that money. There’s no magic time limit; intention and timing carry the weight. In addition, helpful plain-English explainers from Age UK and others reinforce this: disposing of capital to cut care charges is risky and commonly unsuccessful when scrutinised.
The rules also say that you cannot retain a benefit or an interest in any of these transferred assets, so even if you briefly benefit then this potentially disallows you and the government can assess you as if you still had the asset. The Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman has issued guidance because these deprivation decisions are complex and frequently disputed.
Unfortunately, the situation is now going to become even more complex as the new inheritance tax and changes to pensions will inevitably have an impact. It’s both important to always use regulated advisers and professionals practitioners and this applies to social workers as well as solicitors, as well as always using the right trust for the right reason.
My next Blog will deal with more issues raised in The Laughing Robot focusing on all the challenges of a futuristic world.
⸻Julia Ross is co-author of When People Die, a children’s book about death, author of Call the Social (2022) and The Laughing Robot (October 2024). Julia is currently Chair of BASWUK and is writing this in a personal capacity.