AN ELDERLY woman with dementia died before health bosses paid back the cost of her care following a five-year fight by her family.

Richard Roe has won his battle to get the NHS to fund the cost of care for his mother, who had to stay in nursing homes because of her illness.

The family was even forced to sell Judith Roe’s home of 30 years in Woodstock Road, St John’s, to fund her care in two Worcester nursing homes – The Firs care home in Malvern Road and Henwick Grange Nursing Home – which cost between £500 and £600 per week.

Following an appeal victory, NHS Worcestershire has been told to pay the family a “six-figure sum” to cover the costs of her care, which ran into thousands of pounds.

The law says elderly people in England must pay for their own residential care unless their needs are health-related, even though it is provided free in Scotland.

Mr Roe, a regional manager for Homebase and a former pupil at the King’s School in Worcester, remains worried that other families will face the same ordeal if he does not make them aware of their rights.

The primary care trust had decided that the care his mother needed was “social”, not health-related, and that they were not obliged to pay for her care, Mr Roe said.

“It has just been very stressful,” he said. “All the time we were told we were wrong while believing we were right. We became very angry because the primary care trust was very arrogant and unhelpful. They took a long time to respond to letters and requests for information.

“They told me I should count myself lucky because there are people that are more ill than my mother, which was an outrageous thing to say.

“I want anyone else going through a similar experience to know they may be entitled to care. Even if they’re being told they’re not entitled, they should fight for it. With us, they made a mistake. The way they behaved was scandalous. They did not carry out their duties properly.”

Mr Roe has accepted the rebate but refused a £5,000 payment to compensate the family for stress during the appeal, branding it an ‘insult’.

His mother died aged 74 at Worcestershire Royal Hospital on October 30 last year from a combination of pneumonia and physical and mental deterioration through Alzheimer’s disease.

The Health Service Ombudsman upheld the family’s appeal and awarded them the costs of her care on Tuesday, June 23 – eight months after she died.

Before this Mr Roe, aged 40, of Telford, said he wrote “dozens of letters” to NHS Worcestershire – which was then called Worcestershire Primary Care Trust – attended four or five formal hearings and one hearing with the Strategic Health Authority, which backed the primary care trust and ruled against the family receiving funding to support their mother.

Mother-of-three Mrs Rose was a former church warden and teacher at St James and the Abbey Girls School in Malvern.

Paul Bates, chief executive of NHS Worcestershire, said: “Decisions around eligibility for continuing NHS care are extremely complex and difficult even though we have national guidance to assist us. The line between the need for healthcare and social care is a very thin one indeed, but the impact for the individual is the difference between free care and care which is means tested. We would not wish to see Mr Roe’s experience repeated and there are clearly lessons for us to learn. Mr Roe pursued his claim that the NHS should have funded his mother’s care and all the formal procedures put in place to allow families to do so were followed.”