Charity calls for tax-free vouchers to pay for elderly care

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The vouchers would be similar to those already given to working parents

Working people who look after elderly relatives should get tax-free vouchers to help pay for their care, a leading charity said today.

It called for care vouchers for those who look after the elderly similar to the tax-free childcare vouchers that are already supplied to working parents. They would use the tax breaks to buy-in home help.

This would let three million carers stay in their jobs and provide vital extra assistance for elderly people to stay independent and in their own homes rather than institutional care homes, the report said.

The recommendation by charity Counsel and Care would put working people with frail old people who depend on them on the same footing as working parents of young children.

At present the Treasury allows employers to supply £50 a week of wages to every working parent in the form of tax-free childcare vouchers. This can be used to help pay for daycare for pre-school children.

The voucher scheme is one of a raft of proposals floated by the charity to improve the system for helping vulnerable old people.

Its report condemned the high cost and poor quality of help and said it was sewing deep discontent among older people and their families. Care costs are "unexpected and unjust", it said, and the way help is made available is "patchy, inequitable and costly".

The Daily Mail's Dignity for the Elderly campaign, which for five years has been exposing injustices and failures in the way elderly people are treated, has been followed this year by a series of major inquiry findings.

Among them was the report by former Treasury troubleshooter Sir Derek Wanless which condemned the means test system that forces 70,000 people a year to sell their homes to meet the cost of a place in a care home.

Yesterday the voucher scheme was one of a raft of proposals from Counsel and Care aimed at helping ease the financial pain for those who have to go into care homes and providing greater levels of home help for those able to remain independent.

Like Wanless, it warned that big increases in spending of taxpayers' money will be needed to cope with the demands of caring for increasing numbers of elderly people.

A care voucher scheme would direct an extra £500 million a year into providing help at home by providing tax breaks for workers, the Counsel and Care report said.

The vouchers could be used to buy help like cleaning and maintenance of houses and flats and personal assistance for elderly people like help with washing and dressing, cooking, shopping, and going out.

"It would give an incentive to carers to encourage them to care for older people in the future without forsaking their employment," it said.

"In future employers are going to have increasingly to rely on older workers, many of whom will have caring responsibilities. A system of care vouchers could help employers to recruit and retain these workers."

Workers who care for elderly relatives get little help at present. The major assistance available came this autumn, in new laws mainly aimed at supporting working parents, which give carers the right to ask employers for flexible hours.

A state beneft, Carers' Allowance, is paid to those under the age of 60 who look after elderly relatives. But it is worth only £46 a week and is not paid to anyone who earns more than £84 a week.

The report also called for state-supported cheap equity release schemes to allow people to cash some of the value of their home and spend it on home help to enable them to continue living independently.

It said people going into care homes should be able to keep more of their own assets than currently allowed. At present anyone with savings or property worth more than £21,000 has to pay all their own bills.

The report said: "The current system is confusing and alienating for many older people who find the cost they have to bear unexpected and unjust."

It added: "Growing discontent among older people, their families and carers abokut patchy, inequitable and costly care cannot be ignored."

 

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