Care home costs to top £1,000 per week.

[Mister M]

Cheerful thought but all too common sadly.

I believe that workhouses will be brought back to cope with the elderly poor.

 

I think there will be some on here who would love nothing more

[tinfoilhat]

The thing that mystifies me is how it can be cheaper for the government to pay upwards of £1000 per week to a private care home for many people, rather than to run the care homes themselves.

 

Councils do run care homes in some local authorities. Their pricing in my experience is on a par with private ones.

 

---------- Post added 08-12-2015 at 20:22 ----------

 

Family's will end up taking care of their own when it costs a £1000 a week for a care home.

 

You could do what the Germans do and ship em off to Philippines. (Actually true). Quite a bit cheaper and a dementia struck granny won't know the difference.

[Daven]

That's terrible

[*_ash_*]

Family's will end up taking care of their own when it costs a £1000 a week for a care home.

 

I'm glad someone mentioned this.

[Anna B]

A small attempt at breaking down what the cost would be based on an elderly person with alzheimers:

 

Cost of housing - going up as not enough places are being provided due to current budget-squeeze/cuts. Estimate around 200£ a week for a studio with shower facility.

 

Cost of nursing - going up as not enough nurses are available, squeeze on migration, rise in minimum wages, increasing pressure for 'standardisation of the profession', the average Alzheimer patient will need at least 15 hours of nursing per week, this also adds at least 5 hours of admin per week due to H&S overhead. Estimate around 300£ a week per person.

 

Cost of social care - providing facilities and activities to ensure a modicum of happiness among residents. Group sessions etc. will cost between 100£ to 300£ a week depending on the type of care-home. This cost includes overhead costs like communal spaces etc.

 

Cost of specialist residential care - night nursing team, concierge, pharmaceutical, in some cases resident GP/doctors etc. Varies depending on size of location but could reasonably be estimated to be over 100£.

 

Than there is food, which needs to be provided in-house, creating overhead costs for maintaining a kitchen with chefs. On a minimum budget will cost around 100£.

 

Add in generic management overhead, costs for accounting, recruitment, staff holidays and pensions, building maintenance, gardening and so on and you are looking at another 150£ a week in a hurry.

 

I am amazed it isn't at 1000£ yet and would like to know how it is possible not to be.

 

I find your reply extraordinary. You talk as if £1,000 a week were nothing, when it is probably more than most old people will have earned in a month.

 

The £1,000 is for residential care, not nursing care - heaven knows what nursing care will cost.

 

My recent experience of a care home was that it shouldn't cost a quarter of what it did. There was little evidence of anything but the most basic of needs met and that was less than she was receiving at home.

 

The food was terrible, and sparse, with no one to help or encourage the eating of it. The activities spoken of glowingly in the glossy brochure never materialised because 'the lady who organises it is off ill.' In fact there was no social interaction at all, most residents stayed in their rooms all the time. They never went outside to enjoy the sunshine. There certainly weren't any 'group sessions'

Staff, although kind enough, were never available when they were needed, it took them half an hour to answer a distress bell. They didn't have time to chat. There was no contact with the outside world as there were no public phones to use so people could not phone in to speak to a relative, and they could not phone out.

 

I could say a great deal more, especially about the disgraceful episode that led to the death of my relative, but it is too painful, personal and identifiable an issue to put on a public forum, but if that is the sort of care £600 per week can buy I wouldn't waste my money. It was thought she would be safer in a residential home than in her own home, but the reverse was true.

 

It seems no one in this country knows what to do with old people, but taking every last penny off them for this is a disgrace.

[tinfoilhat]

I find your reply extraordinary. You talk as if £1,000 a week were nothing, when it is probably more than most old people will have earned in a month.

 

The £1,000 is for residential care, not nursing care - heaven knows what nursing care will cost.

 

My recent experience of a care home was that it shouldn't cost a quarter of what it did. There was little evidence of anything but the most basic of needs met and that was less than she was receiving at home.

 

The food was terrible, and sparse, with no one to help or encourage the eating of it. The activities spoken of glowingly in the glossy brochure never materialised because 'the lady who organises it is off ill.' In fact there was no social interaction at all, most residents stayed in their rooms all the time. They never went outside to enjoy the sunshine. There certainly weren't any 'group sessions'

Staff, although kind enough, were never available when they were needed, it took them half an hour to answer a distress bell. They didn't have time to chat. There was no contact with the outside world as there were no public phones to use so people could not phone in to speak to a relative, and they could not phone out.

 

I could say a great deal more, especially about the disgraceful episode that led to the death of my relative, but it is too painful, personal and identifiable an issue to put on a public forum, but if that is the sort of care £600 per week can buy I wouldn't waste my money. It was thought she would be safer in a residential home than in her own home, but the reverse was true.

 

It seems no one in this country knows what to do with old people, but taking every last penny off them for this is a disgrace.

 

Sounds to me more a very poor care home than a broken system (which I'm not saying is perfect). The £600 (well, a bit more) got my dad activities if wanted (he didn't) excellent food and a nice room and nursing care. The home you experienced should be burnt to the ground and its owners prosecuted. Note I didn't put "care" in front of it - clearly very little was shown and you very much have my sympathies.

 

As I stare down the barrel of another birthday, with reports of this and that killing me, cancer research knocking on my door asking for money I increasingly ask my self why? Why do I want to get old? 40 years ago my dads ticker would have packed up and he might not have seen 60. Instead his heart was treated but Alzheimer's got him instead and took the better part of 8 years to strip of his mind and dignity till there was nothing left. Was he better off because his death certificate said 72 rather than 62?

[tzijlstra]

I find your reply extraordinary. You talk as if £1,000 a week were nothing, when it is probably more than most old people will have earned in a month.

 

And I find your reply extraordinary. I explain how you can get to 1000£ very quickly and then you complain how a 600£ a week care-home did not meet your expectations.

 

Care costs money, the more needy people become the more expensive it becomes, irrelevant of whether it includes nursing or not.

 

It seems no one in this country knows what to do with old people, but taking every last penny off them for this is a disgrace.

 

I completely agree with both statements. This issue was on the horizon for 75 years (Post WWII baby-boom) and nothing was done to address the issue that was obviously going to arise. Welcome to reactionary government. It is becoming too late to sort anything out now, but one thing that really should be an option soon is that people pay more in pension contribution which contains a ring-fenced insurance policy for late-life care.

 

This happens in most Northern European countries I know of (certainly Scandinavia and the Netherlands, where it is part of the health-insurance policies). But now that they have left it too late here in the UK and the issue is nearly unaffordable they won't be able to create an affordable insurance without the government creating a guarantee-fund that will likely be in the tens of billions of pounds. Not going to happen under Georgey.

 

This issue is just one that is set to explode by the way, old-age healthcare is going to take more and more resources of the NHS as well, to the point that it becomes unaffordable (which it already is to a degree).

[JFKvsNixon]

From today's DM

 

"The cost of a place in a typical Residential Care home will rise to £1,000 a week in coming years, according to a report published yesterday.

Costs have increased at more than double the rate of inflation in the past two decades and were likely to continue rising far faster than incomes or pensions, the study, by the financial services group Killik and Co, said."

 

What is going on? Bear in mind this does not include housekeeping and food costs which will be added on top. Having spent some time in care homes recently, I can say with hand on heart that the care is not even good.

 

Is it only me that thinks this is ridiculous?

 

Between October 2014 and March 2015, the number of care home places in the UK fell for the first time. A total of 3,000 beds were lost as closures exceeded new openings. So in spite of what you believe to be ridiculous fees, the care industry is actually struggling to keep going, half of Britain's care home places could disappear.

 

There is often a funding gap between what the local authority will pay and what it costs to provide the care needed. For example, Four Seasons, which has more than 22,000 beds spread among 470 homes nationwide is losing millions of pounds a year.

 

It is estimated that there will be a £2.9bn annual funding gap in social care by the end of the decade, the national living wage next April will add another £1bn to the costs of care homes between now and 2020. It is thought that the living wage will make 50% of homes are non-viable, if you allow for capital expenditure and the rent on property.

 

This situation has led to many care providers taking on more private residents to ensure that they can continue to operate. So it looks like the costs are going to have to rise.

 

Another unwelcome side effect of this situation is the job losses in the industry. These job losses would dwarf the problems in the steel industry. It could be the same as Redcar happening twice a month if care homes go down.

 

Have a read of this: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/31/care-homes-crisis-dwarf-steel-industry-problems-four-seasons-terra-firma

[Anna B]

Between October 2014 and March 2015, the number of care home places in the UK fell for the first time. A total of 3,000 beds were lost as closures exceeded new openings. So in spite of what you believe to be ridiculous fees, the care industry is actually struggling to keep going, half of Britain's care home places could disappear.

 

There is often a funding gap between what the local authority will pay and what it costs to provide the care needed. For example, Four Seasons, which has more than 22,000 beds spread among 470 homes nationwide is losing millions of pounds a year.

 

It is estimated that there will be a £2.9bn annual funding gap in social care by the end of the decade, the national living wage next April will add another £1bn to the costs of care homes between now and 2020. It is thought that the living wage will make 50% of homes are non-viable, if you allow for capital expenditure and the rent on property.

 

This situation has led to many care providers taking on more private residents to ensure that they can continue to operate. So it looks like the costs are going to have to rise.

 

Another unwelcome side effect of this situation is the job losses in the industry. These job losses would dwarf the problems in the steel industry. It could be the same as Redcar happening twice a month if care homes go down.

 

Have a read of this: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/31/care-homes-crisis-dwarf-steel-industry-problems-four-seasons-terra-firma

 

The Guardian article is very worrrying. I found the question 'is the duty of care to the residents or the shareholders' particularly unpleasant.

 

I don't know what's happened or why. Back in the 70's my Granny was in a very nice, council run carehome. It wasn't posh, but I do remember free singsong sessions and bingo, a little library of donated books, visiting entertainers, and a man who came round taking shopping orders for little bits and bobs that the residents needed.

It was council run and therefore 'free' to the residents. The place I spoke about more recently was vary carefully selected after looking at a lot of homes and chosen because it seemed the best choice, glossy brochure and all. How wrong can you get.

 

What can be done? The system we have at the moment it appears, is unsustainable, even at the current cost. How long before compulsory euthanasia is being considered?

[spilldig]

The Guardian article is very worrrying. I found the question 'is the duty of care to the residents or the shareholders' particularly unpleasant.

 

I don't know what's happened or why. Back in the 70's my Granny was in a very nice, council run carehome. It wasn't posh, but I do remember free singsong sessions and bingo, a little library of donated books, visiting entertainers, and a man who came round taking shopping orders for little bits and bobs that the residents needed.

It was council run and therefore 'free' to the residents. The place I spoke about more recently was vary carefully selected after looking at a lot of homes and chosen because it seemed the best choice, glossy brochure and all. How wrong can you get.

 

What can be done? The system we have at the moment it appears, is unsustainable, even at the current cost. How long before compulsory euthanasia is being considered?

 

Agreed, and this in the last paragraph is why I am against the euthenasia idea that keeps rearing its ugly head every so often, because one person may get what they want without having to do it via Switzerland and get it forced on a lot of people who don't want it, and I still think that £1000+ per week is more about greed than necessity .