Why is the cost of care so high?

[Truetoself]

I think the average household income in UK is around £33K? I believe the cost of a care home is upwards of £5K a month and that of a live in carer us around £10k. I am trying ro work out how this makes sense because it is not proportionate to the income of an average household in the country.

Yes self funders subsidise the council funded residents and yes there is a wide variety in quality and standards.
I have personal experience of supporting elderly relatives in 6 different homes and professional experience of visiting many more as a community nurse.

But, there has to be a ratio of self funders to council funded depending on the fees paid by the self funders. This is where it gets tricky if there aren't enough self funders paying full fees. If a self funder runs out of money the council funding won't be enough to keep them in an expensive home.

It's not binary, it's a sliding scale, but there is huge variation. Doesn't necessarily correlate with cost, though.

We looked into live-in care for an aunt of dh, but it would have worked out rather more expensive than a nice care home. She’d have needed help at night too, which would have meant more than one on shifts.
Plus there would be all the usual expenses of running a home on top.

Care homes - some of them don’t seem so bad when you think of someone on hand 24/7, help with washing/dressing etc., ALL meals and drinks, all laundry, and a LOT of heating. And then compare the daily cost to just B&B in say a 3 star hotel.

Have a look at the care home car park when the owners are visiting to see where the money goes. Bentleys are popular. My stepdad did accounting for a local care home group, they were swimming in profits, not that any of that went back to the staff or residents. A very small group of people are making a lot of money from a lot of families down repeated generations, but it’s ok because most people don’t end up in care homes, despite dementia being the biggest killer in this country.

I wonder how long it will be (not long presumably, as this govt really seems to have the elderly in its sights) until a charge is levelled against the estate of people receiving care in their own homes? I think Theresa May was proposing something like this and it helped cost her the Tories' majority in 2017. On the other hand it might make the bills less eyewatering for those who do need residential care, if the govt was able to subsidise it more effectively.

It does seem incredibly hard on people that local authorities can rinse an old person who lived alone for almost the complete value of their home, yet if they have a spouse or adult child over a certain age living in it, the home cannot be touched. It's a very unfair system as it stands in many ways.

In the case of dementia the cost of 247 at home or residential care can easily exceed £500k if self funded. I think a high cap of say £200k would win a lot of votes, still high but not a devastating amount.

I was just looking at our local care / nursing home. The absolute cheapest room is 2300 per week, if you don’t need a high level of care. The fees included a manicure twice pm, hairdressing twice pm, wine with lunch and dinner, afternoon tea and cakes, concierge to book restaurants and shows, physio once per month. Trips out. In-house cinema etc.

Luckily we managed to look after my parents in their home until almost the end, then a wonderful hospice for the last weeks. As the ambulance crew were carrying my mum into the ambulance to take her into the hospice, someone finally called to arrange the requested support at home - too late!

I work in a care home - there is no profit (it’s charity run) and the fees are as low as they can possibly be to cover the nurses, carers, laundry, cooks, food, heating, entertainment, maintenance etc