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.

Private providers absolutely take the piss. We need money to go into better care run by govt. Govt could run it as an efficient business instead of getting ripped off by for profit providers.

There needs to be better protections for patients and their families.
Higher standards expected.
An improved Care Quality Commission who when they report on homes seem to write almost a cut and paste report. You read a few and cannot tell the difference between too many of them. They seem scared of their own shadow.
The relationship between the referrals between the NHS and care homes need exploring. They are not always entirely okay. My mother was referred to a care home we said we did not want. On exploring facebook the NHS referrer who was very awkward with us was a bestie with the care home manager. Read what you want into that.
There is a lot that needs to be done. But sky high profits for individuals at the expense of better care and pay for those looking after them is a no from me.

Companies are being set up to buy a house and employ people to do single child care. Rinse and repeat.

Something is going to have to change. Much as it's lovely to give disabled kids the best life possible we must face up to the fact that our country is broke, we are facing so many problems and whether we like it or not we just can't afford this anymore.
Like you I think we need to look at a more modern and of course nicer version of disability homes/villages. I'm not talking about a return to the institutions of old but we can't keep going on this huge expensive, bells and whistles for every disabled child. Not when there is so many of them now.
My council tax where I live is really expensive and the council services seem to be getting less and less - uncut grass everywhere etc

If we can afford to house an endless stream of young men from third world countries, as well as sending money abroad for the most ridiculous reasons, then we can afford to look after our own population, most of whom have paid into the system.

but if the state/govt is going broke then something has to change.

Perhaps a return to families living together so some can go out to work, some can look after the kids (or disabled adults) and some can get a break. A sort of rota system. Much like what we did in the olden days with old people who were often cared for at home.

If we wait till it all goes 'boom' then that will be the worst outcome for anyone dependent on the state who will need to become independent very quickly. Far better to sort it now to something perhaps less desirable but that we can actually afford.

I looked after my mother with dementia for a number of years and the cost and effort involved was just mind boggling. So many organisations involved and the cost was £££. That's before I count the cost to my own health and life. Honestly it was cruel keeping her alive with such poor quality of life. Yet no-one will acknowledge that. I would have been horrified at the idea of having my mother 'put down' before she got ill. Having lived through it though I am now a full supporter that we do need assisted dying for those with poor quality of life. I live in fear now for my own old age. I really hope they change the laws before I get much older and have nice, cosy end of life hospices where you can get a quick needle in the arm when your life has become too difficult/poor quality.

I agree with what you are saying. The trouble is we can't afford them either. In fact we can't afford a heck of alot of things. The UK is living like a rich country when we are in fact quite broke. Yes we can keep running up credit to pay for it all but sooner or later the piper will have to be paid.

True. The Country is broke yet the can afford to spend on mass immigration.
Heat, electricity and a roof over their head for free while they wait on a forever home.
In Ireland they are put off the refugee payments after a few months. They are declared homeless to the council and go to the top of the housing list. Meanwhile foreign landlord investment funds are buying bulk rental properties to support their future that councils are renting from them in twenty year leases for top money.
You couldn’t make it up.

I used to think what the hell would have happened to my mother if she hadn't got me to advocate for her/protect her. That's the danger with all these disabled children. Sooner or later their parents will die from old age and then what happens?
Setting up disabled 'villages' would surely give the parents peace of mind that they are settled somewhere before they go.

It must be every parents nightmare to die before their kid becomes an adult who can fend for themselves. What happens though when they will never be adults who can fend for themselves?
Much like the ageing population this is just a ticking time bomb.

What other aspects of social care are you wondering about? Our funding to local authorities is mainly for social care and that IS care for older people or children/working age adults with disabilities. I’m not aware of funding other groups? And as others have said, it is the children/younger adults budget which has massively grown in the last decade or so- and predicted to continue. There is also broadly a huge gulf between the quality provided and cost of the two types of care.

Healthcare is keeping alive more often and for much longer people with disabilities, but the consequences for a struggling care budget are considerable and rarely discussed.

What do you think is the longer term provision for your son? He sounds like he has profound disabilities, what happens when you die?

TBF a lot of this was driven by the scandals about local government care homes, where abuse was prevalent.

Basically, its a job very few people want to do. So, either pay a fortune (current system) or accept abuse (old system)

And the sector - especially children younger people provision - is attractive to highly leveraging VCs. Look at vetcare or dentistry provision. VCs move in, push streamlining operations, extract value as hard as possible, takeover smaller providers to gain ‘economy of scale’, often overbid for contracts- all to grow and provide profits, typically so the company can be flipped and sold on. Young adult /child provision attracts more funding/sympathetic media coverage if required.

But, the main concern is unlike dental care, if one of these companies goes under, once the value has been stripped out leaving these businesses exposed and fragile, it leaves vulnerable people homeless and without care very very suddenly (eg one high growth care home provider maybe only 15 years ago ‘sold’ the care home buildings it owned to a new subsidiary and rented back. Kerching kerching for investors short term. Then austerity hit, LAs stopped paying as much and the rising rental fees broke the company which failed. That left tens of thousands homeless and LAs to pick up the pieces).

It’s worse than the UK water companies being owned by French pension providers- the consequences are so much worse. As a funding and economic model, care provision is broken and frankly, obscene in UK. Gvt should be looking at this model of provision and I look forward to hearing the options for a national care service.

God forbid the welfare of a disabled person should take priority over an untidy grass verge.

It’s that sort of attitude that speeds up the empathy burnout.

We know that when governments ran it, sexual and other abuse was rife.

Could they? The NHS is hardly a bastion of efficiency.

Some people clearly started with more empathy to "burn out" than others.

But private businesa ran bedsits for care leavers and they were horribly abused and neglected , so i dont know that it's been any different. And they were raking it in on our taxes.

How are those children now? X

Brilliant. It is amazing how support and education can improve outcomes for Children. They are a big part of the class, in the early days they acted like they were institutionalised before attending school. The other children were frightened of them.

Yeah - maybe we should go back to religious organisations running this, except we also know that doesn’t always work out that well either

looking after profoundly disabled people is a very tough job. So either attracts saints, but not enough of them, or those for whom it is better than the alternative (recently immigrants)

What will these disability villages look like @ExtraHotDoubleShot ? It’s an interesting point

Well i think this govt is trying to professionalise things and i'm all for that

This is a ridiculous statement. We need to maintain the fabric of society and basic infrastructure. This is for everyone's sake. An untidy grass verge could start to infringe on a pavement and prevent a wheelchair from passing. It also could be incredibly unpleasant for everyone walking past that includes disabled and vulnerable people too. Studies have repeatedly shown that scruffy places attract anti social behaviour. This can be unpleasant for everyone including disabled people. Social care cannot come at the expense of everything and everyone else.

We need a sustainable plan and this needs to take into account the needs of everyone otherwise resentment will fester. We simply can't afford these expensive placements that will suck up all the tax paid by numerous households to fund restbite for one person for a few nights. It just doesn't add up and it's why councils are going bankrupt. We need to be honest about this. We can't afford as a country to meet everyone's needs in the way we would like to. We can't insulate families from the impact of disability and the way that we believed we could in the past. The problem is growing rapidly and are public finances are deteriorating even more quickly. If the IMF end up getting involved then these kinds of placements will instantly be a relic of the past⁹

I just struggle with the idea that these modern nice disability villages would really be cheaper. To me that sounds really expensive to staff.

Im not sure what they are supposed to be cheaper than though.

Is it care at home with occasional respite or the current full time residential places out there.