To think pay in care homes is scandalous

[Clappingforjoy]

I've worked in then and got out of it. Understaffed rushed off your feet. Rude management and simply unable to give the elderly the care they deserve.

You're right.

Far too few staff and the residents get sub-standard care, despite the staff working very hard indeed.

The pay rates are appalling.

YANBU. It's an appallingly underpaid job and elderly people would be much better cared for if that kind of caring was acknowledged as, and paid as, a skilled nursing job.

I briefly worked in a care home when I was younger and as well as the terrible pay, it was simply impossible for me to devote enough time and attention to each resident that was required for me to care for them properly.

YANBU in the slightest.

It's more scandalous when you consider the scale of the fees.

It would be very interesting to work out a breakdown of those astronomical fees charged, and how much of the fee go into salaries; how much into care provision (equipment, supplies etc); how much into capital for refurb, etc, and how much goes into...profit pocketed.

I've got a feeling there's more money to pay people with...

Yes it's disgusting the pay. They seem to be money making machines.
When I was in a care home as a student nurse the management told us we were rationed on incontinence pads. Awfully sad when people are paying good money to be there.

Isn't the problem that for people funded by their council, the council doesn't pay the actual cost. Of course self-funded residents have to pay more, but there is, I assume, a limit on how much can be charged.

I've had relatives in care homes, I have to say that standards have slipped in recent years, and as I understand it, many of the companies are in debt and facing major financial problems.

What sort of care homes are you talking about?
My father is currently on end-of-life care in one on the south coast and I've virtually been resident there in there last couple of months. I've therefore been present to witness nothing but first-class quality care.

OP, families are already struggling to pay the current costs of care homes for their elderly relatives, and the homes are going out of business at an alarming rate, as they can’t make a profit. If they paid higher wages to their care staff, the fees would be unaffordable completely to most families, and the homes would still go bust for lack of customers.
With our ageing demographic, this situation is going to get worse.
I think we may have to go down the Japanese route of developing robots to perform elderly care, or legalise assisted suicide and encourage people to write advance directives with their wishes in the event of dementia.
I would certainly rather be dead than doubly incontinent and demented in a care home, frittering away my DC’s inheritance purely to prolong an existence that gave me no joy and served no purpose.

My friend recently enquired about a night shift job in a local care home...the pay was £8.35 an hour and she would be awake the whole shift... who in their right mind would work nights for that money !!!

"Frittering away my children's inheritance?"
I don't view my father's assets as being "my" inheritance. Their primary function is to provide him with comfortable living conditions. The care home (that his health dictates he needs) provides that function and we children (and grandchildren) love and support him in his final days.
Anything left after that is a bonus.

I have a family member who works in a care home. It is one of the better ones as she has the care for 3 people only but the home charges £1600 per week but she only earns £11 per hour.

Used to know someone who ran (highly rated and regarded) care homes, specifically for people with dementia.

He said the way he managed to do it was this:

1. Employ good staff, pay them well above the market rate and don’t let them work long hours. This decreases staff turnover massively, and the longer in post a person has been, the better they are at their job.
2. Use high quality period buildings, adapt them to modern standards and maintain them well. That way you can factor in steady appreciation in the property’s value into the business model.
3. Use complementary therapy- aromatherapy, reflexology, massage, therapy animals. This promotes a sense of calm and well-being with people, plus it is regular human contact with visitors who come into the home at regular times. It creates a rhythm and structure and just something to look forward to to.

But he also said that the most fundamental thing was getting the right balance of patients, people who were at different stages in their dementia. This is because having too many advanced stage patients creates too much of a burden for the staff and also for the other patients (it’s distressing to see someone else in distress).

The earlier stage patients are not only less likely to get distressed, they are also able to create a community where they look for themselves and others. They can basically be eyes and ears when staff are giving their full attention elsewhere. So for example they’ll be able to go and get a staff member when someone else starts getting upset, or be able to say “I think Mr M needs a bit of attention, he’s looking a bit disorientated, he always looks like that before he gets distressed”.

He said that this makes the earlier stage patients feel like they are still contributing, active members of their community, who are valued and who have knowledge and skills which help everyone. And this stops them giving up, becoming institutionalised and just going downhill rapidly.

He also said in his opinion, part of the problem was that too many care home owners were concerned with not having empty beds for cash flow reasons. So when there is a vacancy, they took the first new potential resident that came along, without thinking through what the balance was. And in the long-term, the only way to make dementia homes work was to be prepared to have empty beds sometimes.

I think it really helped that he started off as a nurse himself, and still did regular hands on shifts in his homes.

There is a lot in his approach that is valuable.

Yes it is. I was paid minimum wage in a home that charges £1000 a week! Understaffed, undervalued and underpaid.

And unemployed people on UC are very routinely pushed into this sort of work, whether or not they are suited to it or not. Great idea, eh, having people who don't want to be there and may even hate older people supposedly 'caring' for them.

OP you probably won't want to listen to me because I manage a care home. But I worked my way up to get there. I still work as a carer/cleaner/cook/whatever is required of me. I get 21k per year to work 40 hours a week plus be on call all the time. Even when I take leave I'll get calls and messages. I am there for the residents, their families and the staff. I only employ quality carers, I don't have a say on their pay as that is down to my boss, the provider. If something goes wrong it's my name on the line. I often work over 60 hours a week and get no overtime. If I didn't love what I do I wouldn't do it.

We have very good staff ratios for the needs of our residents. If someone rings in sick I cover it or my deputy does. There are some very good care homes out there. There are bad ones too of course I'm not disputing that. But some of us work our arses off to ensure the best quality care.

When I was in a care home as a student nurse the management told us we were rationed on incontinence pads. Awfully sad when people are paying good money to be there. That is unlikely to be the manager's decision. Our residents are allocated 4 pads in 24 hours maximum. That comes from the NHS. I appreciate this may be different in other counties.

Locally excellent, small, family run homes with hands on proprietors and management who more than pull their weight are closing by the dozen. This is due to the fact that although the cost of living and minimum wage (rightly) has gone up, the amount of money that the LAs pay in contracts/fees has not increased at the same level. In the town I live in hardly anyone can self-fund or pay a top up so Care Homes are reliant on the Council paying the fees needed to keep the homes open. It’s true that there are huge, ruthless corporations running many cars homes across the UK that are only interested in money but I’ve seen first hand the heartbreak (and even loss of life when happy residents are moved) caused when good homes run by caring and conscientious people have to close due to lack of funds. The crisis in care is only getting worse.

Locally, we are being pushed to care for relatives ourselves at home with minimal support (I had no career throughout my 20s for exactly this reason) and there are greater incentives being offered by the council for untrained people to use spare bedrooms to “foster” vulnerable mentally ill and learning disabled adults than there are being offered to keep happy, settled people in the registered homes that provide excellent care with trained professionals. It’s outrageous. I already know two people who were forced into these schemes when the council refused to raise care home fees by a minimal amount (£30 a week) who have died as a result of being cared for by people who had no insight into healthcare. They were dead within a year of their care homes being shut.

YANBU

I have worked in care homes myself (never again!) And I know how exhausting and thankless it is. I worked so bloody hard and loved interacting with the residents, but was forced to rush through their care and cut corners, so I left. It was a real eye opener when I worked for the NHS afterwards (still a fairly shit job with poor conditions may I add), it was so glaringly obvious how this "luxury" chain care home that charge some residents in excess 3k+ a week was so embarrassingly unprofessional and lacking in knowledge. It is absolute rubbish that most care homes do not have enough money. If this is the case, it is most likely down to financial mismanagement. From what I have seen, the owners of small homes drive top of the range cars and have multiple properties and are clearly taking a large cut from the profits, and the larger chain ones pander to the needs of their shareholders and their customer's needs come second. It is an industry that needs to change quite significantly if it is going to be sustainable in the future. You will not be able to recruit people in to this role. I know someone who is heavily pregnant working in care and os still expected to work long days and has no maternity package (just SMP) and people wonder why people dont want to be carers!

£1000 a week fees per resident?! The max my council pay is £450 a week. Most care homes in this area were getting about £347 a week, as I say virtually no one can self fund or pay a top up, it’s an area of huge social deprivation.

Maybe even £350 a week seems a lot to people but when it’s only a 10 bed home that needs 24/7 staff, training, light, heat, food, equipment, registration fees, DBS fees, sick and maternity cover, insurance policies, building maintenance, activities, IT etc etc...surely you can see that it would be easy to run at a loss and that paying multiple members of staff a fairer wage of say, £12 an hour isn’t feasible. The cost of energy bills alone has shot up astronomically in recent years and so many care homes are in large, old, expensive to heat buildings.

Sorry forgot to add that despite the above, funding is an issue. I can see why some who take on LA cases only would struggle, but the ones where residents are pouring much of their own money in to it are most likely doing very well. The thing is, when staff are cut, the potential for serious mistakes are increased, which makes litigation cases much more likely. Cutting staff to save money doesn't always result in a saving in thd long run.

@WaterOffaDucksCrack OMG!!!!!! I was offered the opportunity to manage a brand new service for 6 service users, 8 years ago, and the salary I was offered was 36k

IsobelRae23 you can earn a lot for big homes/chains. I've worked in them but find them to be like conveyor belts in terms of attending to the residents needs.

This is so disheartening...what’s going to happen to us when it’s our turn?

Sequinned that's a really interesting post. I guess it works where you have an owner like that, and not where it's a chain trying to extract money from shareholders.

I do wonder whether local authorities might find it an option to go in as a joint venture with a reputable person/company. That way they have a say in running it and a share of any profits which can be reinvested into social care?

@namechange84 soaring cancer rates will see to it that many of us will not reach old age...my mum died at 52 from bowel cancer and my dad at 56 so i see no need to worry about my old age.

The thing is homes can't win. To run a home properly you need a decent staff: resident ratio, and to pay the staff a decent living wage and holiday allowance so you have good staff retention, provide good staff training, keep the buildings maintained, provide good food to the residents, pay cleaners / admin staff, and buy hoists, specialist profiling beds and mobility aids, all of which are expensive, not to mention all utility bills (and most older people will want the building warmed all year round). And yes at the end of the day most homes will want to make a profit to stay in business. The only homes that can realistically do this are the ones that charge over £1000 a week per resident, but then everyone complains they are too expensive and the homes are ripping them off. I met a home manager once whose budget was so tight that she said that if they are only 1 room empty they don't make any profit. People (and most local authorities) are completely unrealistic about the costs involved in running a home properly and the rates that need to be charged.

This is so disheartening...what’s going to happen to us when it’s our turn?

Hope that you do not live to that point or plan to terminate yourself. I'd actually rather be dead than in a care home with dementia and I don't say that lightly, even though people say, 'Oh, you'll change your mind when you get there!' Actually, I won't. I have already lost one child and would much rather join her in death than linger here in such a state.

Living longer is a poisoned chalice for many. Health is wealth.