The care funding gap: Why families miss out on thousands
Most of us grow up believing the NHS has us covered. Whatever happens, whoever gets ill, the NHS will be there, free, at the point of use, no questions asked. Then a parent starts needing help at home, and the picture changes overnight.
"The minute you walk out that door, it's the local authority," said Stephanie Leung, founder and CEO of KareHero. "There's a backlog, and it may not be free. You're on your own. No one really thinks about that until they get there."
The point where NHS care ends and the family is left to work everything out alone, that's the ‘funding chasm’.
The funding chasm
The funding chasm is the funding gap, but on a scale most families never see coming. It's the point where NHS care stops and families are left to work out the rest on their own, often without knowing what help exists or how to get it.
We're all walking towards it eventually. One day you're managing fine: work, family, the odd GP appointment. Then a parent has a fall, or gets a diagnosis, and suddenly you're the one working out what happens next.
That's when families get stuck at the bottom, thinking: how do we climb back out of this? Usually it's not because the support isn't there. It's because nobody's told them where to look.
This is where the key education gap exists.
In this scenario, most families only know about one type of care funding. Often people have never heard of the other routes available to them, let alone how to claim them.
The 3 types of funding
According to Leung, care funding in the UK falls into three categories, and confusion between them is exactly why so much support goes unclaimed:
- NHS funding is based purely on health needs, regardless of how much money or savings a family has. It's the one people assume covers everything, and the one that runs out fastest once a person is discharged into home or community care.
- Non-means-tested support is the category families are least likely to have heard of. The clearest example is attendance allowance. This is available to anyone who needs another person to attend to them, with no asset test attached at all. Attendance allowance is worth up to £5,600 a year, tax-free, and if two people in the same household both need it, they can both claim it. Over a typical 3-to-7-year caring period, the overall sum of money can be extremely beneficial.
- Means-tested support is the category that some people assume disqualifies them ("I'm probably too well off for that"), but Leung says the assumption is doing a lot of damage.
What that money actually buys
Funding doesn't just support full-time care. Yes, for many families, it makes a huge difference to the sudden cost of care home residency.
But it's also about the smaller costs that pile up in the meantime. That could be anything from incontinence products, or extra help around the house, to specialist equipment like a stairlift, which typically costs £5,000 to £6,000.
Some local authorities will fund a stairlift outright. Others will help fund broader home adaptations. Families who assume there's "no support there" are often leaving this kind of help on the table.
Why do so few claim the support?
- One part of the problem is structural. There are three separate funding routes, three separate eligibility tests, three separate places to apply. That means it's easy to miss what you're eligible for, especially if you're new to navigating the system.
- Another part of it is psychological. People either assume they're not entitled, or that the amount available wouldn't make a meaningful difference. This is where the misconception takes hold: many assume there's only one type of funding, and that whatever's available won't be worth claiming.
The scale of this is bigger than most people realise.
More than 10.6 million people in the UK are unpaid family carers.
By the time someone turns 50, there's a 50% chance they're either caring for someone or being cared for themselves.
Seven out of ten (70%) employee carers say they struggle to balance work and caring, with 27% cutting their hours and 16% leaving their job or turning down promotion because of it.
Yet only 1 in 3 eligible families actually claim the funding they're entitled to.
The government's own Unpaid Carers Action Plan, Recognise, Refer, Reach, was launched in May 2026, specifically to close this awareness gap.
Supplied by REBA Associate Member, KareHero
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