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.

Even then, private providers are barely breaking even. Bupa massively reduced it's elder care facilities because they weren't profitable. They now only operate in areas where there are very high numbers of private clients and won't take local authority placements at all because it's so poorly profitable.

Maintenance costs, food utilities have eaten most profits.

I work in child protection and have done so for 20 years. The cost of placing a difficult teenager is easily 10,000 a week. Add on education, sexulised behavior interventions etc ... These places are mainly staffed by minimum wage youth workers with maybe a psycologist on role for several homes. These placements are huge money spinners, many investors in our care homes are from abroad. It has been this way for several years due to privitisation. My LA is one of the better ones, trying to bring it back in house,but very difficult when so much (taxpayer) money has to be spent on statutory placements like this and trying to wrestle the money back....

Yes but that's only fairly recently.

I do maintain though, that living for the sake of being alive - whether that be as an older adult with a severely debilitating condition like advanced dementia, MND etc or a severely disabled child - is not necessarily a good thing. Though I know it's an unpopular opinion (and not one I'd voice outside of a thread like this.

Just to make it clear. Most of these services were outsourced, many decades ago, the argument was to offer choice and value for money. In reality there are lots of people making money from our most vulnerable people, which I personally find abhorrent.

OP heads up I know you’ve tried to edit your image but it’s still identifiable

The trouble is people want local authorities run like businesses, so a lot of authorities are tendering or outsourcing authorities, the populace voted for that, so some dont have the opportunity to run their own care homes/facilitities because they're not allowed under the tendering processes

Its what people voted for.

@Onlyifyouknewthetruth2026The total is wild. But when you work out the hourly rate it’s around £70 an hour which doesn’t seem crazy if it’s specialised care? Does it seem like a good facility?

I don’t think you can have this fantastic discussion and then swerve it to assisted dying - something’s gone wrong there.

No one would agree to it for a start. We need to stop defaulting to Nazi Germany and recognise we’re in the UK a century later and the solution to decent care is achievable.

I don’t know why there are more profoundly disabled DC about, abortion’s gone up so that doesn’t explain it.

but at a guess - very premature babies can be ‘saved’ earlier, for a lifetime of 24/hr care and

• a lot of DC are kept just alive by better heart n lung intervention
• more familial birth defects around
• we get earlier diagnoses for LD/ASD combo.

Mild mental health issues too. They arrange it in secret too with foreigners as they cannot tell their loved ones as they risk being arrested for assisting a suicide. Families are finding out about their loved ones when the ashes arrive or by text.

https://prolifecampaign.ie/cold-and-inhumane-clinic-informs-cavan-family-via-whatsapp-of-mothers-assisted-

https://www.itv.com/news/2024-05-15/swiss-clinic-which-helped-brit-47-to-die-in-secret-apologises-for-failures

Sadly, many, many children will never and cannot ever be expected to to do anything of the things you list. I have worked with young people where where learning objectives might be to recognise a change in texture, or to respond to a familiar sound. Huge amounts of resources will be devoted to that end as it has been identified as a sensory or phyical or SEMH target. Literally , thousands upon thousands per child, per annum, so often it isn’t about supporting independence because unfortunately that is never going to be an option for them

A severely or profoundly learning disabled adult is unlikely to have anything more than their benefits to their name in the first place unless they have inherited or have a trust fund.

Older parents and cousin marriage are big factors. It’s taboo even on a sensible site like Mumsnet to say that parents are largely too old these days.

Many of those non-verbal autistic children were heavily sedated and locked away, which is why they were never seen. That is not something we should seek to return to.

When?

Up until the 1980s, or thereabouts, when a move towards care in the community was made.

It's something that only really started to end in the 70s (though never ended completely if you read about the horrific conditions and treatment of patients at Winterbourne View). People like my youngest would often have been consigned to such a place, quite likely at an early age. Even if he had been allowed to stay in the family he would have received no education.

Previous politicians have tried to bring in something and kicked it into the long grass. Andy’s is trying and as much as I will ever vote Labour or AndyB, the idea is ok. Yes, people complain that those who work and have a home pay more than those who don’t have their own home (may be wealthy, rent and earn well), but it is a start and better than people losing all their hard earned cash to a private care home.

Yes, I remember in the 80s a neighbours kid "came home" after being in an institution. He had an LD and was about 5 years older than me.

Agreed, but increasingly there is grey prejudice

This is a revolting way of looking at things! How greedy and selfish does one have to be to want to reduce costs of people in significant need because they don’t want to pay higher taxes!!!
There but for the grace of God!

No - she said he goes to a centre where the ratio is one staff member to two kids.

The government should never have allowed private companies to run these services. They are run for a profit to the detriment of everyone using them - charging a fortune yet employing people on minimum wage. It’s a shambles.

The fact that it costs more for very occasional overnight care for your son than many full time workers earn in an entire year makes me quite cross, actually.

Exactly what I came to say.
And anybody who marries a cousin abroad can pay for their own kids therapy/residentials .
No body willingly has a disabled child. Nobody sets out to do it -unless you marry your cousin,
Unfortunately the current government is too scared of annoying the highly vocal minority group who think cousin marriage is fine.

And for what it’s worth euthanasia will have to become an option.

“”Euthanasia will have to become an option” won’t apply for adults with learning disabilities which mean they lack capacity to consent to euthanising themselves. In the absence of consent or capacity, who is going to make the decision about who is euthanised?

Completely agree. It can be a miserable existence. It’s hard to see how much quality of life people have in those circumstances. I have a very real case of this in my family right now and it’s awful 😔