Nursing home fees

My ex is now in a BUPA nursing home in Cheshire.Quite high fees. DD lives nearby visits most days and has had to be quite assertive to get his needs met (she is an experienced nurse-trained at Charing X hospital
P.S They won't take patients with dementia !!

I've heard good reports of Homeshare UK. worth investigating if you have a spare room.

I heard this week from a friend about the high cost of nursing homes in UK. Here in France there is a beautiful new home within about six miles of us - it has nice single rooms and none are pokey - all with e suite facilities. They residents have a simple breakfast in their rooms and lunch and dinner are served in a dining room which is much more like a restaurant. They have for lunch soup, a starter, main course, cheese and a sweet and wine if they like and of course finished off with coffee. Dinner is a slightly smaller three course meal. They are set meals but very varied.
The staff are all very pleasant and helpful and in the main local people- the chef ran a bar restaurant in the village for years.The local doctors and nurses plus the physios visit several times a week and there is a hair salon and the local hairdresser spends Thursdays there. The cost of this is €500 per week.
We have friends staying there at the moment as he needs to convalesce and she is unable to manage on her own at home. The standards are very high and activities take place in the communal sitting room. There is also a pathway around a garden so residents can go out and be fine in wheelchairs or with a Zimmer frames etc.
This home is run by a UK company!

Forgot to say there is an Alzheimer's wing in this home too and a wing which is semi secure.

I'm moving to France !

Here is an article of a third world country offering nursing home care to Westerners.
TBH if one had dementia this sounds like it has some plus points. Lack of NHS nearby - but would one want to be kept going for an extra 5 or 10 years really. Rather be looked after properly for a short amount of time once you get past the point where you recognise the family.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25438325

There is of course an entitlement to funding from the local authority or the NHS. The former is based in income and savings, the latter on medical/nursing need (regardless of assets/income). So the concern about how many years the value of one's house will last is not one that should cause too much concern. There is only a problem if the money runs out and you are in a home whose fees are more than the LA is willing to pay.

But this begs the question as to the quality of the home, which is the most important consideration.

Those of us Gransnetters who have been involved in organising care for elderly parents will know only too well how variable that quality is; and the systems for monitoring care quality are lamentable.

Care at home can be just as problematical. A live-in carer sounds a wonderful idea, but finding the right person is a minefield. The agencies who provide these are again of variable quality and their monitoring procedures leave a lot to be desired. And it is often more difficult than we think to adapt to a stranger in your home. Organising their time off entitlement is also a challenge.

Having said that, if you strike lucky, a care home can be an excellent option, with company, care and a shedding of responsibilities. But finding that gem is very difficult indeed and demands single-mindedness, bloody-mindedness and determination; qualities in short supply when you a facing a loss of independence and are disabled and/or vulnerable.

We found an excellent care home for my parents (they were there at different times) which truly did what it said on the tin, and cared. It was not the poshest or tidiest of homes, but it was filled with love and a genuine concern for the well-being of the residents. Finding it was a long hard depressing slog. We kissed a lot of very smelly frogs along that way.

Thank goodness for your timely post Mishap. I was beginning to panic after doing sums which showed that with the house sold + our miniscule pensions, DH and I could only afford a year each in one of these care homes. So I guess it is a Local Authority Home for us - or - alternatively, blow the lot on a world cruise and accidently fall overboard when nearly back home

The best home where we last lived in Wales was a local authority one - people lovely etc and most of the residents were from the area. My friend did a lot of research for her mother and said this was by the far the best and friendliest - as it happened her mother passed away before she was able to leave the hospital.

Granny23, certainly in England, there are few, and getting fewer, Local Authority Care Homes.

My Mum (aka Mrs Bucket) was persuaded to go into a care home by the swanky look of the place. My brothers were taken in too but DH who visits CH on a regular basis was sceptical. He was right!

Mum is now in a BUPA Dementia Care Home which is wonderful. She had been paying the total amount [minus nursing] until her money got below the level where LA funding kicks in. Now, she pays a small contribution from her remaining money and her pensions and my brother pays a 'top-up' of £35 per week.

The LA don't in general run homes now, but they do pay for you to be in a private one. Once your capital runs out you have to contribute any pensions/benefits that you have with n amount allowed for personal pocket money.

Organisations like Age Concern have advice on their websites.

The cruise option has a certain appeal though!

My plan is to manage here till I drop off my perch - but "The best laid plans ...." and all that!

Nobody fancy Thailand then?

I have had three relations go into care over the last 10 years and all were in homes where the care was good. One was not mentally impaired, other than being unable to cope alone at home because of depression and not taking medications. He did report one member of staff who he saw treating another resident roughly, she was suspended then sacked. there were no repercussions. The fees were at the lower end of the range, but it was an area with high unemployment.

I still have an aunt in care. She has vascular dementia. When she moved into the home about 5 years ago she was paying about £700 a week. How much it is now I do not know as I do not handle her financial affairs.

We bought our current home for our retirement when we were in our early 50s. It is large rambling with a large garden. 20 years later we are still having no difficulty running it. However we always accepted that at some time we will need to move to something more practical. We have also decided that if either of us is diagnosed with dementia we will move into one of those care villages with bungalows and flats where you can buy in car when you need it and there is a care home on site, so if one person needs care everything is linked together.

When looked at from the home's point of view, one careworker on a wage of £7 per hour for 24/7 care is £1176.
That's without any overheads such as food and heating, etc. or NI for the carer.
£7 is going to be the minimum wage next year, but do you want to be looked after by minimum wage.
Anyone who has to be moved in the nursing context, even to go to the toilet or to be put in a bath, needs two people.
When we see people in carehomes or hospitals needing help to eat or go to the toilet, we get angry because there are not enough members of staff to help, yet on the other hand we complain about the cost of staffing these places.
It's a dilemma, isn't it?

durhamjen I see where you are coming from re fees and cost generally. I was working on the assumption that I will not need 24/7 care but maybe 2 hours in the morning and again in the evening. I know that my head is in the clouds!

If I have a cardiac arrest in the street, I just hope that there is not an enthusiastic First Aider around. Maybe I should have "do not resuscitate" tattooed on my forehead and then everybody wil be clear.

Whenever I visit my aunt's care home I always notice how many staff there are about all the time. The main sitting area is in open area the centre of the home and people and staff are always passing through and chatting and the sheer number of staff is always noticeable. Oncewhen I was there, there was a fire alarm practice and I was amazed how many staff reported to the rallying point.

Not all the staff are on the minimum wage as some are nurses, trained activity therapists or have other professional qualifications.

As long as those staff are chatting to the residents and not discussing hair, make-up, missed periods and the like amongst themselves!

They are doing precisely that. In fact I often admire how patient and chatty they are with some of the residents, who can be very difficult to communicate with and have behaviour that is not easy to work with.

A well managed home.

Exactly my point, Flickety.
When my parents were in the same care home, it was noticed that there was nobody available during the night to look after the five diabetics.
If someone had a hypo, a doctor had to be phoned for. A district nurse had to come round every evening to check blood sugar levels and give injections before the evening meal.
Because of the increasing prevalence of diabetes in old age, I think there should always be a trained nurse in every care home, not just in nursing homes as it is now, I believe.
This will cost more.
And if talking is good medication, there should be people to talk to all the time.
My mother was a nurse. When she was in her final nursing home, five minutes walk from my sister's house, the nurses used to go into her room if she was awake and talk to her about what nursing was like in the old days. They always knew if she was awake as she had a tracheotomy tube and used to cough a lot. It wasn't so good for the nurse who was talking to her at 5 a.m., then went back at 7 and found her dead, but at least she knew my mother was happy before she died in her sleep.
We need good staffing, not just the minimum.

Since my last message, I have been trying to find out how much care home fees are in Durham. Nobody seems to want to tell me! I am sure the fees scale used to be on the old CQC website, but it isn't on any more as far as I can see. Lots of care homes have closed down in the county recently. The council run homes have closed and two care home companies have gone into liquidation. That's probably why.

My Aunt was in a superb home, in Durham, but only for about three months because she only went in when she was 97.

You seem such a lively bunch with lots of good heart I have enjoyed this chat forum.
I couldn't fit a bidet in my bathroom so invested in a digital bidet, it washes and can dry your private bits, very pleased with it. I have thought about having a downstairs toilet fitted but not sure how to go about it. I have a stair lift but oh it is sloooow.
Main thing is I pray that I can keep using the computer.

That gives a weird picture, magsmay. What's a digital bidet? I can't imagine you have to sit on your laptop?
I live in a bungalow, which we moved into because my husband had cerebellar ataxia and kept falling downstairs. He died two years ago this Wednesday.
So I do not have a problem of the stairs.
My brother in law is looking to move into a bungalow from an upstairs flat, but will only look at ones that have two toilets. He realises that the older one gets, the more need there is for more than one toilet.

I'm not looking for a home, Harrigran, but I probably ought to move down the bottom of the hill, although I would then lose the views from the top of the hill. The village is on hills, except for Front Street which floods. I was just looking at costs because Galen mentioned the cheapest were £1000 a week where she lives.

No, I didn't think you were durhamjen

Just looked out of the window and seen the ice on the car. I really do need to think about moving downhill.
I have to take the six year old to school tomorrow, and I hate going out on the ice. Coming back uphill is as bad. I get backpains if I walk too fast since I had the aorta problem.