Managing Partner and specialist lawyer, Nick Hall has secured continuing NHS Care funding for a family a who were needlessly forced to sell their elderly mother's home to pay for her nursing home fees have won £88,000 compensation after wrongly being refused free care on the NHS.

Marjorie May Clarke, 77, who suffered from Alzheimers and Parkinson's disease, spent the last six years of her life being cared for in an up to 2,000 per month care home.

When Central and Eastern Cheshire Primary Care Trust refused to fund her care, her desperate family had no choice but to put her bungalow, in Northwich, on the market.

Her son Geoff said: "My parents both worked hard all their lives and paid their taxes yet when my mother needed help the state just wasn't there for her.

"Selling the house allowed us to pay for the very best care but after six years the money was beginning to run out and we had no idea where we were going to find any more money from.

 "It was only after my mother passed away that we discovered the NHS should have funded her care all along.

"It makes me so angry to think there may be thousands of other families going through the same process, completely un-necessarily."

Nick Hall, questioned whether Mrs Clarke would have satisfied the criteria for fully funded NHS care and successfully challenged the PCT and recovered £88,000 in fees - thought to be one of the largest pay out of its kind in the UK.

He said: "Mrs Clarke required round-the-clock care, however despite this the NHS claimed that she failed to qualify for fully funded NHS care.

"It was clear to us that due to the severity of her illness, Mrs Clarke should have qualified for a benefit known as Continuing Healthcare Allowance, which would have entirely covered all nursing home fees.

"Her family were put through completely un-necessary stress and we suspect this is only the tip of the iceberg and in fact thousands of other families may be in the same boat."

The deadline for the review of claims for fees incurred prior to January 2004 has passed however, it is still possible to request the PCT to review patients where care home fees have been incurred since 2004.

For further information, or to arrange an interview with Jeff Clarke or Nick Hall, please contact us.