An acute shortage of Community Care Services
Caroline Abrahams, Age UK’s charity director recently said, “It’s deeply worrying that many older people are ending up in hospital due to lack of the right sort of services in the community”. She said that no one wants to be in hospital but for older people all too often it can lead to an avoidable deterioration in their health, such as falls and urinary tract infections.
A recent report on the state of health and care of older people in England, concluded that the health and care system is struggling, and too often failing, to meet the needs of our growing older population. It is vital to reduce the strain on overcrowded hospitals and leave the NHS better set up to respond to the increase in the number of over 65s and especially over 85s, Age UK said.
Closure of Care Homes
Almost 200 residential care homes in the UK have also shut their doors in the last year with the loss of 1,033 beds. This means that disappearing rooms means even more frail elderly people are stuck in hospital for even longer.
Care in the Home
Unless you are lucky enough to have Local Authority funding, there is obviously a cost. It may be surprising to learn that it can be less than the cost of a Care Home.
We have always been conscious of this and do our utmost to keep the fees as competitive as possible. We can do this because our carers are self-employed. This means you pay them for their service direct and only pay the agency a management fee for planning and monitoring your care. This substantially reduces the cost to you as there are no employee expenses or taxes.
| Type of care | Carer’s pay (no VAT) |
Management Fee (inc. VAT) |
TOTAL | Competitor | Difference per week |
Difference per month |
Difference per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single person | £780.00 | £280.80 | £1,060.80 | £1,300.00 | £239.20 | £1,036.53 | £12,438.40 |
| Single person (High-level) |
£840.00 | £302.40 | £1,142.40 | £1,300.00 | £157.60 | £682.93 | £8,195.20 |
| Couples | £980.00 | £352.80 | £1,332.80 | £1,700.00 | £367.20 | £1,591.20 | £19,094.40 |
Despite the acute shortage of carers, we have some reasonable availability of ‘Live in Carers’ and limited availability of daily carers wanting to help you.