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.

Yes, that’s what I said, @Serin. But there was only me and I needed to work. Mum blossomed in her care home, in her case it was far worse for her at home.

My Grandmother was in a care home before she died. It was around £850 a week and the owners used to park their Bentley and top-of-the-range Mercedes on the driveway outside the lounge, blocking the residents' view of the sea. I thought that was vulgar and insenstitive - especially also when they were paying their care staff minimum wage.

I worked in a better care home for a year whilst considering a nursing degree. Day shifts started at 7.30am and ran until 3.45pm and were absolutely back breaking. Mornings involved getting 15 residents up, washed, at least x 5 of them bathed/showered, beds made, rooms tidied, toiletted, and fed breakfast. The dining room was cleared of food by 10am so all of this had to be done within 2.5 hours. Many needed help with food and drink. We then had a 15 minute break to try and get some fluids into ourselves, to then go round putting residents clothing away from the laundry, deal with visitors and requests for hot drinks etc, toilet the residents, and fill in charts and get the dining room ready for lunch at 12.30. Lunch was carnage - lots of residents ate in their rooms and you would again have 15 of them to feed, water and get on/off commodes etc. Dining room had to be clear by 2pm for visitors, and a lot of residents were put to bed for an afternoon sleep. We then had some afternoon bathing, before supposedly finishing in a tired daze at 3.45pm - but often it would take an hour to update residents charts/files and handover to afternoon staff so it was more like 5pm when you left. I would come home, have to get straight into the shower and barely be able to talk let alone come home, do housework and sort my then teenage DC out.

All of this was done for the magnificent sum of £7.25 an hour.

It put me off nursing completely.

YANBU, the care home companies are making a fortune too.

I worked as a home carer. 15 min calls. That was to cook food
30 min calls to change a pad, clean up, cook, wash up, fill in paperwork, give medication... etc etc
There's no time for the small things that matter. It's really important to remember that X likes hot water for a wash, Y loves talc under her arms, Z likes scrambled egg in a pan not the microwave... and so on

My mum is in a care home. She has Alzheimer’s.
I have nothing but admiration for the carers. I just couldn’t do the job myself. They work 12 hour shifts. 8am - 8pm or 8pm - 8am. They’re always busy and IMO, there isn’t enough of them.
As an aside, those saying hell would freeze over before my mum went into a home or no relation of mine would go into a home, well thanks for that. Way to go to make me feel shittier than I already do!! When mum was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, we promised her we wouldn’t put her in a home. Unfortunately, it was a promise we couldn’t keep. Looking after her was way more difficult than we could ever have imagined. So thanks!!

@Pinkocelot, please don’t feel bad. I did too but it was absolutely the right thing for my mum and dad. As I say, Mum blossomed and Dad’s sole complaint was the food was too good and there was too much of it. Care homes get a bad rap but if you find a good one - and we did - they’re a lot better than discomfort and loneliness at home.

No one is trying to make anyone feel bad PinkiOcelot.
I'm a health care professional (as is my sister who looks after my mum day to day).
We are both trained to care for properly.
We also both have the space and financial resources to be able to do so.
If you read my post it does say that IME most people with dementia are not distressed and are capable of enjoying life.
We all make decisions based on our own abilities and capacities at the time.
I did not set out to offend and apologise if I have done.

@WaterOffaDucksCrack Our residents are allocated 4 pads in 24 hours maximum. That comes from the NHS

Are you serious? If we’re paying £800 a week minimum for my aged parent to be cared for, we can’t expect them to have all the pads that they need? They actually only get their free NHS allocation? You’re admitting that, as a care home manager? I am in the coroner’s court next week due to the treatment my mother received in her very expensive, seemingly ‘good’ care home. Treatment that lead directly to her death. God only knows what is going on in these homes when managers are prepared to admit this kind of thing, as if it’s nothing at all. I shall be committing suicide at the merest hint of dementia, that’s for sure.

@Sotiredofthislife I cared for a lady who had a stroke and was a wheelchair user, needed care in her home. She had to pay for the majority of her care and was only funded for 3 pads I think despite being incontinent. A lot of the people we went to would ask not to be changed as they were running out of pads and couldn't afford them

PinkiOcelot

I used to say hell would freeze over... then I started work as a carer. There are some cases where there is no other choice. Not everyone can give up work to look after ailing parents, or have them move in with you, or manage with homecare.

I've told me parents that if the time comes me and my sisters will be what we can but given the increasing retirement age that's likely to not be as much as previous generations.

Are you serious? If we’re paying £800 a week minimum for my aged parent to be cared for, we can’t expect them to have all the pads that they need?

I know where I work we have a stash of spare pads in the office for residents (left over from people who have moved on or passed away). We would never leave anyone in a dirty pad. If they'd ran out we would take some from the office or pop to the local shop if needed. Most residents have to buy their own. It's not included in their care costs or provided by the NHS unless they're prescribed, who do only prescribe 4 a day but for people on council funded care only 4 calls a day are paid for for pad changes. That's not to say we wouldn't whisk someone off on our break if we noticed they needed changing or if they buzzed to let us know they'd soiled but we wouldn't pop in more than four times a day on the off chance they needed a change.

I'd be surprised if any care home left a resident dirty. I've worked in a few as the care agency I work for outsources staff to other care homes when needed and I've never come across a care home who left residents soiled if I let them know they needed changing.

Pads are expensive. The ones our residents use cost £12 for 10. On top of food, central heating, electric, water, building maintenance, staff wages and admin - no care homes can't afford to provide unlimited pads that doesn't mean we won't find one if desperately needed. It does mean we'd phone a resident's family and let them know their relative had run out of pads and could they bring some asap.

I cared for a lady who had a stroke and was a wheelchair user, needed care in her home. She had to pay for the majority of her care and was only funded for 3 pads I think despite being incontinent

My outrage isn’t that the NHS isn’t appropriately funding pads for incontinent elderly people, it’s the fact we can be paying hundreds a week (and some) on a private basis to these homes and even basic care isn’t being provided. More importantly, staff casually mention it in public like it’s nothing. It’s incomprehensible at that level of fees paid that staff are conserving use of an essential piece of equipment that prevents soreness, and helps retain dignity. Our elderly people deserve better. And frankly, as a paying customer, I also deserve better than knowing this was the fate of my mother when I could no longer manage to care for her.

That people are struggling to find their own incontienence pads is a different issue but if as adults, we persistently provided our babies with no more than 3 or 4 nappy changes every 24 hours, there would be prosecutions for neglect.

This can’t go on. £800 a week for a single room, second rate care and not even a clean backside.

The staff in care homes are generally tested terribly. Low pay and terrible terms and conditions. It’s not right at all.

However many homes run at a loss. There’s huge costs involved and normally what social services will pay for the funded residents does not even break even. They have to try to make it up with the money from those who pay privately, but there’s only so much you can charge.

There needs to be more funding for social care from central government before things can even begin to improve. It’s an absolute joke at the moment and those who are suffering are the vulnerable people who need care.

The fact that we are even discussing adult human beings on a mass scale soiling themselves on a regular basis is madness isn't it?! Like I said before you wouldn't let your dog live like that.

When you consider that £800 a week has to pay for;

Food
Water
Gas (care homes are stupidly warm - they need to be)
Electricity
Carer's wages - plus training
Management and admin support (payslips need generating, rotas need creating, holidays and sickness covered, wages need paying, social services need meeting with etc)
Out of hours wages - If I need to call in sick for my night shift there needs to be someone to answer the phone and arrange cover
Equipment and maintenance thereof.
Ongoing staff training
Sick pay and holiday pay
Cleaning Staff
Janitor
Building Maintenance and so on

The costs start making more sense. It's essentially £800 for a hotel room with care staff. No-one would sneeze at paying £800 a week to stay in a hotel room without care staff.

YANBU

In my younger days I had a short job in a care home. I was quite slim then and not very strong( size 6-8) and physically I could not do the job. Moving the elderly around is tough even with hoists, commodes etc.
I had my interview with the manager and never spoke to her again until I handed in my notice ( so much for helping out the staff as she told me she did frequently)and training was basically following around another carer for a week or two and watching what they did and helping( no safety meetings, first aid, discussions of working twords qualifications etc) and one worker got the hump when I wouldn't help her physically lift a patient( that was completely forbidden.
My work place was away fromthe main town so I had to stay in the building on my lunch break( no car then) and the old folk had emergency buzzers that they always pressed and even on a break you had to drop everything and go to them. So no way to mentally and physically get away from the job.
This was a posh private care home in a posh town up north. A lot of the staff were brought in from Nigeria and ( I think) Ukraine because they could not get EU workers to do the job because of the ridiculous pay and hours ( about £5.40 ph plus signing a contract that stated I would work over 48 hours per week when asked to) staff ratios were really bad plus the Ukrainian women working there were only sticking at the job until they had been in the UK long enough to be allowed to look for different jobs.
The hours were 4 days at 8am to 8pm shift and one day at 8 am to 2pm or 2pm to 8am as a standard contract and some of the old folk were lovely and some were absolutely horrid self entitled posh people.
They messed up with my paper work meaning I was not paid for my first month there until the next pay day after that. I believe I lasted about 6 weeks in that job.they did try to make me stay longer but I gave them my weeks notice as stated in my contract and left. It's a shame it came to that.i do think of some of the nicer old people from time to time.

I'm sure some are lovely but my experience put me right off. I was very young ,maybe around 19

So Frequency, it’s my fault? I should have put her in an even more expensive home? If £800 isn’t enough, surely the answer is to charge more and provide very clear breakdown of where the money is going. But please don’t tell me that I can’t expect a basic level of care for £800 a week.

And I’m sorry, but £800 a week in a hotel is way beyond my personal budget.,

No, it's not your fault. People who genuinely cannot afford the fees should receive a lot more financial support from local and central government than they do but yelling that the care homes are in the wrong for charging so much is not the answer.

The staff do their best under shitty conditions with shitty pay. While it's not the fault of the resident's and their families that more funding isn't available it's certainly not the fault of care staff or their managers (for the most part - excluding some private care homes).

The fees are low considering what it covers. There just isn't extra in the budget to give everyone unlimited pad changes. There should be. They should be provided free of charge as far as I'm concerned but they aren't so someone needs to pay for them and in general care homes can't afford to on top of their other costs.

Assisted dying is all very well but you have to have capacity to consent to it. It wouldn’t help anyone with dementia.

That's a huge issue, even with advanced directives, do they still consent?

I'm 50 and so many of my friends' parents or their parents have dementia and it's just never good. They all wind up needing FT, 24/7 care if they don't die before it advances.

FIL died after a short illness last November in his mid-70s. MIL's best friend's husband, however, now has advanced dementia and zero quality of life. MIL admits she is glad her husband died the way he did rather than suffer like that.

It costs around £760 a week for each resident in a care home to be looked after. Hence why the fees are high.

This doesn’t excuse poor care and any concerns should be reported immediately to the CQC.

Most care staff I have met do genuinely are about the residents. But it’s a fact that they are over worked, under paid and under valued. Often terms and conditions are often awful and their jobs are not secure. Homes also regularly take on people with more complex needs than the staff are trained to deal with, which obviously makes doing their job properly and giving all the residents enough time more and more difficult.

It’s a broken system which needs a huge overhaul.

Absolutely, I used to work in the social care field and it was the opinion of myself and some of my colleagues that it's not in the best interests of the service users for care to be outsourced in this way.

When you take it down to basics, it's a business. Care homes are run to make money, some are run by good people who care about the people they're caring for, others are not. The bad ones take an absolute fortune to care for some of our most vulnerable citizens and pay the people who care for them a pittance. This leads to high turnover and unfortunately you don't always get the best staff this way.

And it's not just the cost of pads that would need to be taken into consideration. It's staffing. If everyone had unlimited pad changes there would need to be more staff on the floor to cover the time. Some residents require two carers for each pad change and special equipment which takes time to use (and costs money to run and maintain).

But as I said, I've never known a care home knowingly leave a resident soiled or wet unless the resident has capacity and refuses a change. The care staff I work with will beg, borrow and steal to make sure a resident has access to hygiene products if they've ran out, including going to the shop with their own money. They will use up their break to make sure a resident is dry and comfortable. They shouldn't have to, but they do.