Cost of social care. Aibu

[Onlyifyouknewthetruth2026]

My son gets overnight respite 2 nights a month. Not a great amount but still respite. I have attached a pic showing the annual cost which is alot. Just for reference.

Got me thinking about social care and money.
With a aging population and more calls for social care no wonder it's on its knees
Im curious what others think about the cost.

How many hours does that cover and how many members of staff?

He's there from 2pm until 12 the next day so 22 hrs or 44 hrs a month. He goes to a respite centre with a ratio of 1 staff to two children.

We are supposed to have four nights / month in a similar setting
We have had no respite since july for various reasons including staffing.

That does sound a bit expensive! The trouble is that everything is going up so much atm. Contrary to popular belief most social care providers are not raking it in and many are barely covering their costs. Insurance and heating cost alone have dramatically risen. The costs are endless to provide a good level of service.

You talk about the ageing population but it’s people like your son you cost the most. £36k for 26 nights is huge. That would be 9 months of full time care for an older person.

I’ve got a case where someone with LD is costing £12k a week for a placement.

Our LA spends more on LD care than older adults by far.

Someone moved into our area last year and we had no choice but to fund - fairly so- but that one person cost £1m or so to our already overspent budget.

What would you like to see.
Care homes fees at my council funded homes cost roughly 50k a year. Which is alot also.
Im talking about social care in general not just elderly or disabled people.

I’m not saying people shouldn’t get the care. Just that the biggest cost is not the older adults.

It’s insane that one person can cost so much and multiply that over their lifetime is immense. The older adults costs are small in comparison.

I’ve said for a while now there will be ‘disability villages’ doing everything on mass economies of scale in future.

The most expensive placement I came across in my previous job was £28,000 per month. For a 15 year old with ‘SEMH’ issues. I’m not even surprised any more.

@Onlyifyouknewthetruth2026 is that £33 an hour?

It’s hard to know whether that’s expensive without knowing what it involves.

Who is providing the care, a private or LA place? When it comes to SEND schools and care homes,LA resources are so poor they have to outsource to private providers and are getting ripped off to high heaven. It's quite possibly the same in other areas of social care.

Saying that it's £53 per hour? Not that much if it's a specialist carer, food, heating, lighting and general costs for running the place they're staying in.

There will have to be.

One persons 26 nights a year is costing more than a minimum wage worker would even earn in a year.

It’s just not affordable long term for individual care I mean I dare say it’s already not affordable.

Social care eats funds like a black hole. But people don’t like the other options as it harps back to institutions and the disabled being hidden away. Rather than seeing a newer version where it could just be a safe happy place

My friend and myself both have adult daughters who are profoundly disabled, needing full on 24 hour care, frequent medical intervention and every aspect of their day to day to day lives attended to. When my friend sadly fell very ill, this care was covered by a nurse and a carer doing three 8 hour shifts all at enormous cost per hour, we joked that it was the equivalent of 42 people a week doing our caring role ( just caring, no housework or admin stuff), whilst we get our 86 pounds a week. So yes, respite for some of the very disabled people is costly but if it helps families to keep their heads above water then it's worth it. I haven't had any respite for 3 years, the last time I paid 5k for a 5 night break, which was a third of the cost as the rest was made up of charity and government funding.

How care justify charges, be that LA led or private I do not quite know.
They always seem extortionate to me.
Someone, somewhere does need to explore it.
Why would one night cost £1390 ? How does it arrive at such a charge ?
I would be fascinated to see how that charge would be broken down.

I agree, how is that affordable now? Councils have no money, they won’t be able to carry on paying for things like this.

Ive worked in both Adults and Children's social care. Older people's care is a fraction of what providers charge for children. Its a real eye-opener.

Yes it's expensive, but if the person needs it, they need it. If it keeps someone being looked after by their family for longer then it's financially worth the cost.

Wow! Yes, I really don’t think it’s sustainable. I’m not sure what the answer is, families caring for disabled children definitely need help and respite. but some sort of economies of scale rather than individual bespoke placements are going to be essential, along with some type of cap on overall costs - £12k a week is insane.

It makes me even more furious that carers allowance is only £86 per week. Which I know isn't the point of the thread, but I still think its worth highlighting at every opportunity.

This is a lovely sentiment, but how do you propse we finance it? I've worked with disadvantaged and disabled young people my whole life and some of the amounts we spend are eye watering - six figures per child simply for education in lots of cases . Often it is justified, but equally budgets are finite, so what as a society can we do?

@DollyPinkDaydream “so what as a society can we do?”

Yes, what is the answer? It’s definitely unsustainable.

This! We care for our two severely learning disabled children. We also both work. Have gone to work before on zero sleep. Two jobs really, each. Don’t get paid twice!

When the money runs out it won’t matter if they need it when the bill simply cannot be paid.

Thats why a more cost effective way of proving this care needs to happen and that will very likely be a stop on individual care in that sense and a full move to retirement home style.

Hopefully ran by the local councils.

Seems reasonable to me. OP says it covers 22 hours, some 1:1, some 1:2. Assume 12 hours are 1:1 and 10 are 1:2, that’s 32 hours. £1360 is an hourly rate is £41. £25-30 of that will be staff (employers NI, holiday pay and pensions contributions need to be added to what is presumably not much above a NMW wage), plus fuel, accommodation etc.