I am the co-founder of a new charity called When I Get Old , a movement for change that brings together older people, people thinking about ageing and organisations. Its aim is to create more options for people who will draw on social care and support in later life.
As we get older we may need additional support, and we all want to stay in control of what happens. We are entitled to advice, information and an assessment from our local authority to think about what we need and to set that up. However, because of the pressures in public services, in practice many of us who have to pay for care and support (because we have resources that puts us above the threshold for the state to pay for it) get limited help.
- More than 200,000 people are waiting for an assessment[1].Local authorities acknowledge that their advice and information for those of us who are planning ahead for care is often not sufficient. [2]
- Around 20% of us who receive care at home and 40% who live in care homes self-fund. Self-funders make important decisions about choosing and paying for social care with little or no prior experience. They often rely on small or inexperienced networks of friends and family for advice. [3]
- Nearly half of us who live in care homes for older people are paying the full fee as we have savings above the threshold, and nearly 80% of us in this situation are residents of care homes specialising in care for people with dementia.[4]
What we want
When I Get Old brought people together and asked: What kind of care or support would you want for yourself or people you love in the future? The report on the results showed that we want respect, the opportunity to do what we want, the chance to contribute and to be in control. We do not want more of the same (home care and residential care) done better. We also want good information and advice, with someone alongside to reassure us, help us to plan and get creative about our care.
The need for a radical leap in thinking about what is offered?
Since information and advice is not reliably provided by the state, enabling us to access it privately could help to relieve pressures on local authorities, avoid waits and act as a catalyst for better options to be imagined and co-created. This creativity and the wide range of options we come up with would benefit everyone, not just those of us who fund ourselves.
Over the last few months, we have been busy working with Gerry Nosowska, BASW and some amazing independent social workers to explore this. Everyone we have spoken to agrees that many different independent professionals can and do play an important role in providing advice, information, guidance and help to those of us who fund our own care. They include independent social workers, physio and other therapists, solicitors and financial advisors.
There is already a potential network, but it is not yet fully formed or offering a clear a route to the kind of information and advice we all need in later life. So, we have been working with others to come up with a shared action plan for 2026 including to:
- Build a network of independent social workers and other professional advisers so they can share learning and support each other
- Capture and share what independent social workers and other professional advisers are already doing
- Work together to highlight the potential of independent advisers as part of the solution to pressures on social care and on us and our families
- Create a model of how independent advice, including social work, can best support those of us who are self-funders in later life.
If you want to know more and/or to get involved, contact info@wigo.org.uk . We would love to have you in our gang
Angela Catley
[1] Adult Social Care – Care Quality Commission
[2] ADASS-Spring-Survey-2024-FINAL-1.pdf
[3] Experiences of those who self-fund care | NIHR
[4] Care homes and estimating the self-funding population, England – Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)
