What is the average cost per week of a good OAP Home?

1MM6 our Abbeyfield homes are about £900 a week if you have dementia which my mum has.

Shoequeen I agree with you but I object to my mum paying £1000 a week as she is self funding and those who are funded by the council pay £700. In essence my mum is subsidising those who cannot pay. The fees should be the same for everyone.

I also agree the fees are not outrageous and I would rather my mum paid that money and was well looked after as she is than that I worry about her all the time as I did before she went into care.

How do you think the £300 difference should be paid? the only way would be for councils to pay more, which would have to come from increased council tax or central government grant (paid for by taxes or more cuts to services).

When you talk about "Loads of people don't inherit anything or waste their money. Many of them work hard all their life. Some end up with money at the end of their life; some don't - for all sorts of reasons.", you immediately come up against the left or right-wing views we all start from and they are very different.

Each bit of back pay that the Tories are offering is basically an idea stolen from elsewhere, or a repeat or previously offered amounts and all appear to be uncosted. I think the current and previous Tory government are an embarrassment to the country.

I do not believe there is any organisation on earth that could achieve what our civil servants are being asked to do. It's typical Johnson Waffle. James Cleverly was on Sophie Ridge this morning and it soon became apparent that all the promises are to be paid for from future "increased tax take" from future increased earning. In other words, borrowing against a very unknown tomorrow.

As for care, it needs a greater brain than these Hoorays possess. They still haven't worked out that their cuts have destabilised the whole system.

We need, first and foremost to build more appropriate housing so that people can stay in their homes but not become isolated. We need to replace the cuts in daycare so people can get out and feel life is worth living not that they are just waiting to die. We need a decent care system that does not almost totally rely on the good nature of the carers.

... and that's just for a start.

One other point. Those who do not have the capital to fund themselves still pay. The Local Authorities (LA) pay as little as possible (quite rightly). All your income except £25/£30 a week goes toward payment and you lose some of the benefits that those self-funding without the involvement of the LA would keep. Yes, you will probably be in a cheaper room but it is quite possible that, although some only pay a proportion, others loss of income could equal the cost to the LA or even, in some circumstances, be a little more.

James Cleverly must have found a magic money tree!! (As an aside, he's being taken apart on Twitter because he's starred in a Conservative propaganda film, claiming that William Wilberforce (famous for his involvement in the abolition of slavery) was a Conservative/Tory. He wasn't - he was quite famously an independent MP.)

Back to the topic. I agree with you. The whole issue needs tackling intelligently - not as a throwaway/bribe to elderly Conservative voters. It's going to cost somebody money, but the question is who should pay for it? As you say, it's a politically sensitive issue.

On your last point, I also agree. I really don't begrudge anybody who ends up in a council-funded room with minimum pocket money to pay for occasional treats and new undies/nightwear.

growstuff I think it would penalise me because I would be subsidising the care of people who can't provide for themselves. I have no problem helping those who were not in a position to look after themselves through no fault of their own but that is not always the case. Some people are profligate. One example is someone I know who sold their pension as soon as they were 55 so that the state could care for them when they retired. There are always 2 sides to the arguments. I do not agree that it is as simple as a lottery, some spend, some save and some cannot do either.

But why would you need the money, if you were to be in a care home? You'd pay more or less the same, whether or not some people are being subsidised by the council.

Who do you think should make up the shortfall?

I'm sure some people are profligate. I'm sure we could all think of somebody like that. Personally, I can think of more people who have just been downright unlucky. Some people never did have the means to buy a property at the right time, some haven't had the health/ability to earn decent money, etc etc. I'm not going to go into details on here of people I know who've worked damned hard all their lives and ended up with nothing.

I hope the person you know enjoys being in a crummy room living on hand outs. Personally, it's not something I would choose.

And that’s the crux of it. Ability to pay buys choice. Had my parents been dependent on public funding, they’d have been split up because she needed 24 hour care and he didn’t. She would have been funded, he wouldn’t. So, after 64 years of marriage, they would no longer have been able to live together.

The care home I found for them was lovely with enough, properly trained staff. The home my mum would have got, had she been council funded, literally made me cry when I saw it.

Money buys choice. I’m very grateful for that choice and would never resent those who don’t have it. I’m sorry for them.

I am aware this may not be of interest to anyone- but I do think it is good to sometimes look at how things are done elsewhere.

In Switzerland- people need to be looked after in a 'care home' - 'normal' or 'medicalised' - and who have a house or savings- can choose to pay themselves- or give up their home and savings so the State picks up the bill- and they can keep about £30000 each for their inheritors. If they choose to pay, then again, about £30000 each is left for inheritors- but of course if they have not spent it all down to that limit- rest goes to them as well.

"I have no problem helping those who were not in a position to look after themselves through no fault of their own but that is not always the case."

The cry of the right-wing taking us back to the Victorian view that we were put in our place by God (or science, or whatever).

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.

And that, of the poor who don't manage, they are again divided (in the views of the better off right-winger) into deserving and undeserving.

However, it seems to me that although, back in Victorian times, there was an artificial distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor we have taken over a century of progress to reach a point where all the poor are now all considered undeserving - and are to be starved or left to die in appalling circumstances as a consequence.

jura2, my point about costs was in reply to another poster who described care home charges as outrageous. They aren't.

Your question was average cost of a good care home. My answer would to be very suspicious of any home charging less than £800 (in the south east)

JenniferEccles I find the language in your post offensive. Sponging and squandered are the two woods I refer to. Some people, through no fault of their own, have to rely on the state for help financially but that is another debate. Squandered who are we to say what is a waste of money, everyone to their own.

Agreed Monica, and I understood, thanks.

Could anyone with some stats knowledge and experience- care to give an approximate figure re Johnson's promise that he will stop people having to sell their home to pay for their care? Please.

Also many people who have bought their own homes have been given the money from their family. They never earned it in the first place.
Those people are always on top with the best choices!
It is really horrible to decide that people who don't own a house are bad in some way.
Or to be called a scrounger , how horrible!
I have friends with big houses and none of them earned the money outright they were all given a great start with family money.
Why so much resentment that someone might get their Care Home paid by the council? It won't be very good. Where I live all the best Homes are private and not available to those without money.
It Just boils down to some people are luckier perhaps and not necessarily about hard work at all.
both my parents worked all their lives way past retirement and still couldn't buy their home. They lived in London. Too expensive

I have had in-laws in care homes, one for over 17 years as his body was in fine fettle but he had dementia and became a danger to himself, so needed drugs and care as he couldn't manage his personal needs, including feeding.

His home was sold and the burden of cost over those years, when fees increased regularly became a dreadful worry to his adult children who were managing the finances.

It is fair to say that their father, who'd been a Professor and had worked hard in academia and research (some of it ground-breaking) all his life, had nothing to leave to his children, even though he and his late wife both worked all their adult lives.

There were some people in the same home who had it all paid for them.

Is the moral of the tale It doesn't pay to work hard?

I am not sure.

I imagine most of the people who own care homes, leaving a manager to do the managing, are very wealthy individuals.

Maybe it's time for state intervention and subsidy given care of the elderly has become an expensive nightmare, hitting some families much harder than others.

There were some people in the same home who had it all paid for them. Day6 [Sun 04-Aug-19 18:15:40]

Can I refer you back to the last paragraph of my post [GracesGranMK3 Sun 04-Aug-19 12:55:31] which clearly explains that no one who has it all paid for them.

The people who are in the home via the Local Authority almost certainly worked at least as "hard" as your father-in-law without the good pay and pension. Your comments are very damning of your view of the world. Lucky you that you do not know what their lives may have been like. I find this sort of discrimination - for that is what it is - quite disgusting. Seeing people as deserving or undeserving poor is simply the class-based snobbery of those who have never really had to struggle and who have little or no imagination.

who

Apparently average length of stay is around 800 days, ie just over two years, that would be a little in excess of £100k pp. Where’s the money going to come from? Can’t see it personally.

so currently about 420.000 in care homes in UK x 800.000

that is a lot of money for sure. No wonder Johnson has not mentionned it again.

Yup £343 billion. Not going to happen, is it?

ooops, you wrote 100k pp for the 2 average years, sorry.

But never mind the accuracy of the figures- it just isn't going to happen- and numbers of older people is going up and up.

All my mum’s money went on her car home at £1000 a week for 4 years so we didn’t inherit anything. Did feel it wasn’t fair that some people are paid for but the money has to come from somewhere and it’s a huge amount.

They are not paid for!!! At the very least the contribute and may actually be paying more than the Local Authority cost in loss of income and they don't get to leave a anything either (other than the same allowed amount if they have it)

I have never seen such insulting posts.

The people who are in the home via the Local Authority almost certainly worked at least as "hard" as your father-in-law without the good pay and pension

And you have just made yet another huge assumption Gracesgran

As did you. It is the system that is at fault but that does not make one person better than, harder working than or anything else that makes them a special being nor are their children.

As it is the system that is wrong; please step comparing the people. For all we know someone on this forum my be about to go into a care home shortly. Please can we talk about how the system can be improved NOT people.