How we won a refund from a cash-grabbing care home firm | Letters

As witness to the cash-grabbing nature of these businesses (The great care home cash grab: how private equity turned vulnerable elderly people into human ATMs, 28 March), I would like to draw your attention to a specific practice: that of trying to deny grieving families the balance of fees owed to them when a resident dies in the home with full weeks already paid for.
I had already heard of this from someone else, so I was on the alert when the same thing happened to us. We were told that it was not their “policy to refund” when, policy or not, a careful reading of the contract showed that the money was owed. We appealed, and were successful.
I imagine that many families in the grip of bereavement simply accept this “policy”, shrug their shoulders and say goodbye to the money owed to them. I had the advantage of being pre-warned, and of having a lawyer in the family who read the contract and drafted the email that got us the refund.
I would also add that, thankfully, we had no criticism of the care our family member was given. There was a definite separation between the team of carers and administrators local to the care home, who we liked and trusted, and the team at head office. This could also be seen as a clever strategy.
Name and address supplied
After Margaret Thatcher launched the idea of privatised care homes, I completed a master’s degree in social care management in the early 1990s. The disastrous effects of the flawed economic model were evident at that point. Launching the idea, the government said that moving provision to the private sector would both improve choice for people and reduce costs.
Anyone with a basic understanding of care home or hotel finance would have known this was impossible. At the time, I was managing a residential facility for children and young people, so had first-hand experience of managing this type of budget. To maximise income and keep costs low, it was essential to optimise the use of facilities by remaining as close to full as possible, requiring an excess of demand over supply. However, if customers were to have choice, then there had to be vacancies in several homes at the time of need, requiring an excess of supply over demand.
Private businesses invariably need to maintain profitability, so they will pursue 100% occupancy, while also adjusting their prices upwards to deal with times of reduced referrals, thus defeating both original aims.
Roy Grimwood
Market Drayton, Shropshire