Care homes and benefits - Care homes and benefits

A care home is a place that gives you nursing or personal care as well as accommodation.

This guide applies to people who are having all or some of their care home fees met by their local authority or the NHS. If you are fully self funding, you should speak to an adviser about how this might affect your benefit entitlement.

Some benefits can still be paid when you live in a care home. Some stop being paid once you, your partner or your child has been living in a care home for a set period of time. Others are reduced if they included amounts for your partner or a child.

Please note: This is a complicated area and we recommend that you seek advice from an expert benefits adviser about your particular circumstances. You can use our Find an Adviser tool to find a local adviser.

You should tell whoever pays you benefits (for example, Jobcentre Plus, the Pension Service, Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) , HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) or the local authority) that you have moved to live in a care home. You should do this before you have been in it for 28 days as none of your welfare benefits will stop or go down in the first 28 days. They can then make any changes that need to be made so that you are not paid too much or too little.

If you own your home, its value could affect the amount of means-tested benefits you are able to get when you move into a care home. In some cases, this means you are not able to get any means-tested benefits . The rules are complicated and there are several ways that the value of your home can be ignored for a period of time. If you are in this position, it is important to get advice. Use our Find an Adviser tool (link above) to find a local adviser.

It is important to remember that although the benefit rules state how much benefit you will get when living in a care home, you may have to use some of the money you get from benefits to pay your care home fees. Unless you are funding yourself, the local authority will add your benefit income to your other income when working out how much you should pay towards the care home fees.

You should always be left with a weekly personal expenses allowance of at least:

England: £30.15
Scotland: £34.50
Wales: £39.50
Northern Ireland: £27.19 

Applies to: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland