Jargon buster for health and social care
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Home Care Services
Home care services help people who are finding it difficult to do everyday activities at home. These services help someone remain in their own home and are priced on the basis of scheduled care worker contact time.
How Can Home Care Services Help?
Home care services help people who are finding it difficult to do everyday activities at home. Care workers visit the home and help with everyday tasks relating to personal care such as preparing food, eating and drinking, getting washed and dressed, and getting in and out of bed.
How Much Do Home Care Services Cost?
The cost of home care services vary between services and locations and can differ at weekends and on bank holidays.
A good guide is from the Homecare Association which publishes minimum price information each year – see here.
The recommended minimum price in England is £23.20 per hour, and that takes into account costs such as care workers’ wages and travel time as well as the costs of running the service. This is a minimum price and is likely to be higher in areas like London and also for some home care services that are paying staff at higher rates in order to recruit and retain care workers.
Almost invariably, prices are higher during periods when it is harder to find staff or when staff can demand higher wages – this means weekends, bank holidays, and possibly evenings too.
In practice, most clients pay for half hour slots priced at around £12 each. The weekly cost to a client will then depend on how many slots are booked each day. For example, two slots per day – perhaps morning and evening – every day of the week, including weekends, could cost around £170. This equates to £680 per month, or around £8000 per year.
The home care service will conduct a needs assessment. This will help them understand what their care workers will need to do and how long each care slot will need to be. You can then discuss how many slots will be required each day. The number of slots will depend on how much alternative support you and other friends and relatives can provide during the week or weekends.
Paying the Cost of Home Care Services
Remember, these services are means tested and your parents might not have to pay at all. The Local Council can undertake a financial needs assessment to see if they are eligible. Eligibility thresholds are different in the four UK nations. The lowest threshold is in England, where councils help to pay for the costs of social or personal care if you have savings less than £23,250.
If a parent does have to pay, then they can apply for, and if eligible, use their attendance allowance (link to site content https://carents.co.uk/guidance/apply-for-attendance-allowance/) which could be as much as £101.75 per week.
There may also be other benefits your parent is entitled to; the Money Helper website gives information about pension payments and pension credits. According to their information, one in three people eligible for pension credit do not claim it. (https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/pensions-and-retirement/state-pension/pension-credit).
The Turn2us website also has a good benefits calculator that can help you track down other payments to help with the costs of care.
It’s well worth bearing in mind that paying for home care does enable you to stay in your own home. By comparison, the mid- range price for residential care is around £750 per week, which adds up to £3000 per month and around £36,000 per year.
