Moving a parent into a care home: the move, the first weeks and the guilt

The home's own assessment matters more than it sounds. It is how the home decides whether it can meet your parent's needs, and it is where the care plan the staff will work from begins. Care homes are required to assess a person's needs and preferences and to involve the person, and anybody lawfully acting for them, as much as they wish to be. Use that. Tell the assessor about the hearing aid that is never in, the tablets that have to be crushed, the time your mother likes to go to bed, and what she does when she is frightened. It is kinder to your parent if the staff know these things on the first night.

If the council is arranging the place, you will deal with a social worker as well as the home. The council has to contract with the home and pay the full fee, and it collects your parent's own contribution separately, so the paperwork you sign may be with the council rather than the home.

An adult is assumed to be able to make their own decisions unless it is shown that they cannot. That is the first principle of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, and it applies to where somebody lives. If your father understands the move, can weigh it up and can tell you what he wants, then the decision is his, even if the family disagrees with it. Capacity is judged decision by decision, so somebody who is confused about dates may still be able to decide where they live. Mental capacity and how it is assessed goes through how that is tested and who does it.

If your parent cannot make this decision, it is made in their best interests. That still means involving them. The Act says the person deciding must encourage them to take part as fully as they can, and must consider their past and present wishes and feelings and the beliefs and values they have held. If somebody holds a health and welfare lasting power of attorney, the decision to move into a care home falls to them; a property and financial affairs attorney cannot make it. Otherwise it is usually made by the council or the health professionals involved, after consulting the family. Lasting power of attorney explains the two kinds, and how to tell someone they need care has more on the conversation itself.

If one parent is moving and the other is staying at home, the move separates a couple as well as changing where one of them lives. Couples separated by care needs is written for that situation. And if the family is still not sure, or your parent is still saying no, it is not too late to look at care at home first. A carer living in the house costs from £1,050 a week on PrimeCarers with our fee included, and how live-in care works explains what that involves. You can search for carers near you and compare their rates before the date is fixed.

The one-page profile is easy to leave until later, and it is what the staff need on the first day. Keep it to what a carer meeting your mother at 7am would want to know. If your parent has dementia, the Alzheimer's Society publishes a leaflet called This is me for exactly this purpose.

Leave behind jewellery with real value, large amounts of cash, bank cards your parent no longer uses, and anything irreplaceable that could be lost in a move. Ask the home how it looks after small sums of spending money and whether there is a lockable drawer.

Your parent may be upset when you leave, and it can be hard to walk out of a room where they are crying. Staff in care homes see this on first days, and they are there to sit with your parent once you have gone. Ring the home later rather than going back in. If your parent settled after an hour and ate some supper, that was a good first day, even if it did not feel like one to you.

When your parent asks to come homeSection titled When%20your%20parent%20asks%20to%20come%20home

A parent in a care home may ask to go home, in the first week or months later. If your parent has capacity to decide where they live, they are entitled to leave, and that has to be taken seriously rather than managed. Talk to them about what is wrong, talk to the manager, and if they still want to go, speak to the council about care at home. Trial stays and coming home again covers how a return home is planned.

If your parent lacks capacity to decide where to live, and the arrangements in the home amount to a deprivation of their liberty, the home must ask the council for an authorisation under the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards. Since June 2026, whether they amount to one depends on the whole situation, including whether your parent objects, rather than on a single test. A family member is usually appointed as their representative, and that person can ask for a review or challenge the authorisation in the Court of Protection. SCIE's guide to the safeguards sets out how they work.

Raising a concernSection titled Raising%20a%20concern

Start with the manager, in person or in writing, and keep a note of what was agreed. Every care home must have a complaints procedure. If that does not resolve it, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman looks at adult social care complaints, including care your parent pays for. If you think your parent is being harmed or neglected, contact the council's safeguarding team straight away; safeguarding adults and how to report explains how.

The guiltSection titled The%20guilt

You may feel guilty about the move. That can be true whether you once promised it would never happen, whether you were the one who could not keep going, or whether a hospital made the decision for you. The feeling does not mean the decision was wrong. It can sit alongside knowing that the move was needed, and that your parent is looked after through the night as well as the day. It can also come back each time you leave after a visit, and you may find it easier in some weeks than others. It helps to say it out loud to a friend or to your GP rather than carry it on your own. The wider question of what it means to hand care over to somebody else is covered in when to hand over to a professional.

The house is not counted in the council's means test while your parent lives in it. Once a care home move is permanent it is disregarded for the first 12 weeks, and after that it is counted unless a partner or certain other relatives still live there. Above £23,250 in capital your parent pays the full fee, with no limit on the total since the planned care cost cap was cancelled; self-funding explains how that works and what to watch as savings fall. If the fees would mean selling the house, a deferred payment agreement lets the council pay and be repaid from the property later, and the statutory guidance says councils should aim to have one ready by the start of week 13. If the council is paying, local authority funding sets out the financial assessment and what your parent keeps each week. If the move started as a trial, do not sell or give up a tenancy until it is confirmed as permanent.