elderly home care
Discussion
In my experience it's far from cheap. Just been sorting this out for my Grandmother. She used to have one ten minute visit from a home carer once a day. After getting home after being in hospital for a couple of months she's now got to have three half hour visits per day for a while. I got the financial assessment through from social services this week, and nearly died from shock when I opened the letter. Total charge for the visits is nearly £1500 per week (yes, you did read that correctly). Over £6000 per month! To say I was horrified was an understatement.
It's means tested so at the moment we don't know how much we will pay, and how much social services will contribute. I expect that they'll want her to use up my grandparents hard earned savings before they help out much though. It did however answer several questions I've had for a while about why the NHS is in such a mess, and taxes are so high (the home care is carried out by private companies contracted to social services / the NHS).
So basically be prepared to be spending big money, or even to think about giving up your career to take care of the care yourself (which is where I'll have to think about heading if the situation continues indefinitely).
It's means tested so at the moment we don't know how much we will pay, and how much social services will contribute. I expect that they'll want her to use up my grandparents hard earned savings before they help out much though. It did however answer several questions I've had for a while about why the NHS is in such a mess, and taxes are so high (the home care is carried out by private companies contracted to social services / the NHS).
So basically be prepared to be spending big money, or even to think about giving up your career to take care of the care yourself (which is where I'll have to think about heading if the situation continues indefinitely).
Is she simply infirm or is she also ill (Alzheimer's, cancer etc)? A lot of charities will help out with things like carers (they have their own set of local volunteers a lot of the time) and day centres that they will provide transport to so she can get out of the house, as well as contribute to the cost of things like specialised equipment for her home to make her life a lot easier.
main problem is advancing dementia so forgeting medication that sort of thing also prone to falling which is worrying what with the stairs etc. my partner is going out of her mind with worry and having never been down this road before trying to figure where to start. at the mo she is in a temporary home but she is becomming aggresive which is very out of character which i think is born from frustration at not being at home.doesnt help she live 100 miles from us so popping in is not very easy.
Trevelyan said:
In my experience it's far from cheap. Just been sorting this out for my Grandmother. She used to have one ten minute visit from a home carer once a day. After getting home after being in hospital for a couple of months she's now got to have three half hour visits per day for a while. I got the financial assessment through from social services this week, and nearly died from shock when I opened the letter. Total charge for the visits is nearly £1500 per week (yes, you did read that correctly). Over £6000 per month! To say I was horrified was an understatement.
They're charging in the region of £140 per hour for the service they're offering then. Having done the job myself, in a semi-supervisory role, I was getting between £6.50 and £7.50 an hour (the higher wage for night shifts), plus 42p fuel expenses per call (irrespective of mileage travelled - up to 7 miles between calls - but I could claim tax back for mileage from the HMRC to top that up if I knew how) and a free supply of gloves. Other PPE like disposable aprons was supplied on a case-by-case basis. The uniform had to be paid for out of the wages, and we had to supply our own pens/paper/clipboards. Training (in house or Local Authority) was compulsory but originally had to be done in our own time (as agency staff not salaried), even if it clashed with a shift we would have done otherwise, then new management offered to pay £5 per half day for any training.
The company was also in the habit of shorting the clients. Even when new management straightened a lot of stuff out, your shifts were timetabled so that travel between calls had to be done on the client's time. And of course you only got paid for the time you spent at the call (clients signed in and out on your timesheet), not the time taken to travel between them.
My company was relatively generous to it's employees though.
My point to all this - if you can cope with the hassle of organising it, hire your own carers directly. You should be able to be assessed for carers allowance to care for this as well, as your GM's condition is chronic.
Edited by oldbanger on Saturday 18th July 13:51
My Father suffered from Altzheimers (sp?). The aggression part is the important part. Care homes will not take aggresive patients. That means he went to an NHS home/hospital which was free. I was worried about this being no more than a "loony bin" but turned out to be better than all the care homes we had looked at.
The cost of care is massive, if the person has more than £32000 in savings including their house you get no help from social services until the "pot" has dropped below that figure.
The cost of care is massive, if the person has more than £32000 in savings including their house you get no help from social services until the "pot" has dropped below that figure.
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