So I was looking at possible care homes…

[tobee]

My parents are currently relying on a live in carer and relief carers for the live in carer (which alone is 2 x hours a day). The live in carer started in mid March to look after dad (who has moderate dementia) as mum had a long hospital stay and then a rehab hospital stay for about 2 months. She had broken a femur and dislocated a hip replacement requiring 3 hour surgery. She’s 90 next month and dad is 91.

Although physios were optimistic that mum would gain more independence and so on, my sister and I are thinking it’s likely that this isn’t realistic. (Obviously if it is - problem solved). Paying for live in carer etc is not going to be affordable for many more months and they will have to sell their home and self fund care home to live there permanently. So I’ve been looking at care homes. But so many questions. These are my major ones:

1. how do you decide what you think is affordable? I can see some super duper homes that start at over £3,000 per week per person. All the way down to less than £1,000 per week. But how can you possibly guess how much they can afford when you don’t know how long they will live?

2. did people who have found care homes found personal recommendations are the way to go?

3. Anyone had to get care for both parents at the same time? Was it fairly easy to find homes that that could take 2 together? I’m not expecting it will be easy to find a double room.

4. I’ve found several nice looking places on a tentative online look but that’s all very well but they may not have spaces. How hard was it to find a home you liked with vacancies?

We’re in the south east of England by the way. Part of me wonders why people don’t just go for the most expensive option because why not? I’m slightly joking here but it’s all seemingly like guess work.

Obviously going to visit etc will tell me a lot but there seems to be about 70 bazillion care homes in this area so how can I make a short list? Looking online seems pretty superficial. All reviews on the site say it’s been fantastic for their “loved one” so far.

Does that proof include ownership of a house/ flat ?

I'm in the same situation ATM OP, totally overwhelmed by it all.

@tobee I won't try to help with financial queries as others have done that much better than I can.

However, I would say, if you possibly can, go with personal recommendation. All is certainly not what it seems in some homes. No home will be perfect but you want to be absolutely sure that the important things are right.

A family member was in a care home in the South East for just over 4 years and I never had a moment where I worried about her safety. It might not have looked like a 5 star hotel as some do but it was clean, comfortable and cosy, never smelt of wee and the carers built such a fabulous rapport with each resident.