NHS FUNDING
Lying lows
VALERIE CULLIFORD was only 47 when a catastrophic stroke left her paralysed from the neck down and “locked-in”. She retained full cognition but communicated only with eye movements and required 24-hour care for the last 23 years of her life.
The £835,000 cost of her specialist care in a Maidenhead nursing home over two decades swallowed up her entire estate. However, her family later learned she was legally entitled to NHS funding – and that local commissioners denied her this by editing her assessment.
In 2009, when her home and all her assets had been sold to fund the care, Valerie’s local council referred her to East Berkshire Primary Care Trust, now Frimley Integrated Care Board (ICB). It assessed her as eligible to have all her costs covered under NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC), which is not means-tested and should be available to any adult with ongoing, serious health issues. This continued for a year until her death.