That sounds about right? £78k a year for that level of care. You can’t expect the staff to work for nothing. They deserve higher pay.
“Dr Jo Wilson was a high-flying international executive before she was diagnosed with dementia two years ago, aged 66”
Should have saved for her private pension.
No pity at all for this. The state pension is all she should get (like everyone else in the country).
The problem with social care is that any time the Tories try and actually fund it, their pensioner voters rebel against them.
TM’s “dementia tax” nearly lost them an election on it’s own.
The article mentions that the costs will eventually wipe out their home but this isn’t true. A jointly owned property is disregarded when calculating assets for social care fees as long as the spouse is still living there. The only reason why it would be included would be if it wasn’t jointly owned, i.e., the dementia patient owned it solely. In which case he’s put himself in a precarious position that he should have addressed years ago.
I work for Adult Social Services. The amount of people who think the state should pay for everything is astounding and some people will go to great lengths to avoid paying for care. We get the ‘Ive paid my stamp” argument frequently. We need a culture change in this country on how we approach social care in terms of saving for it. Or we need to accept massive tax increases. It’s not going to resolve without money.
I was watching BBC Breakfast this morning with my nan, who has dementia and whom I care for, and was hoping to find a link to the video report they broadcast in this article. I think that was a more important piece, at least a great companion piece to this article.
Whilst my current experience of carers coming to visit is mixed like Bill’s here, my own experience working as a carer a decade ago mirrored that of the woman in the broadcast. Not enough time allocated to calls, pressure to keep on time and get to the next call, working over to ensure a service user is receiving the care they need — or facing the choice of having to leave them so you can get to the next call. All whilst paying a good chunk out of pocket for your own fuel to get to calls and on minimum wage or barely above it.
In a decade nothing has changed. If anything it is worse. Much worse.
One example: yesterday we learned my nan, who is bed bound and doubly incontinent, had only been allocated one continence pad per day. How did we learn this? When we called to ask for more after a month. This is not something unique to her. What are people supposed to do if they can’t afford more pads? Are we supposed to leave my Nan in a soiled pad all day? They understand how skin breaks down. It’s abhorrent.
This is genuinely an effect of the Tory Party’s policies, and older folk continue to vote for this not seeing that it is them who will end up receiving the lacklustre care — which is degrading and inhumane.
I have to stop this here before I completely explode on this. I don’t have the time nor the energy to spare, which I guess is a by Tory design, or at the very least an added bonus, to stop us from complaining and really making a noise about the state of the health services.
I wish the left would attack private care home owners like they attack landlords. I know a girl whose boyfriends parents are private care home owners and they have given them money to purchase a 700k house. She’s only 26…..
Why does it cost £1500 a week? Care home staff are not well paid.
Are residential homes making a massive profit?
Its always sad to read about someone getting dementia my neighbour has it who lives alone and his elderly family are over regularly they must be exhausted. The system is broken and must be fixed
As it stands for me my social care if I need it will likely be a large dose of fentanyl or spending my savings if I have any on a one way flight to Switzerland. As unless there is massive changes people will face an undignified time homebound and lonely.
Its fucking maddening the govt bin the social care plan of 4.5bn a year yet have pissed away 65 billion **in a day** through incompetence by spooking the markets.
The whole system is broken. You’ve got economically disadvantaged older people who can’t afford any care. You’ve got very wealthy, asset rich, elderly people that won’t pay for their care. The pensioners won’t vote for higher taxes. But they do vote for more spending to their benefit.
The entire expectation of ‘cradle to grave’ was prefixed on retiring at 60-65, living for a decade, and spending ,at most, 3-5 years in care. They all smoked, their houses we’re riddled with carcinogens, they never exercised and heart disease was endemic. Now older people retire at 65 and the majority will live for another 20-30 years, requiring varying degrees of support. But they no way near paid enough into the system over their working lives. Not even close. Whenever you read comments from pensioners they all absolutely believe they’re entitled to free care and top quality medical and social care. Because that was what they were promised!! No government will ever tell them the truth, that they will have to pay more, that they didn’t economically produce enough, didn’t create enough wealth, that the country is moving towards bankruptcy with a smaller and smaller younger work force, working longer and harder, to pay for their care.
And it’s unjust. It causing genertional strife. The pensioners demand greater and greater sacrifices from the younger workers, to pay for it all. And yet every young person knows that they’ll have to pay their own way through life. That they won’t get very much at all at the end. It’s patently unfair and unjust, that pensioners with millions in assets, mainly property, refuse to contribute. Their identity is so wrapped up in hoarding equity and assets, they’d rather the tax man gets it all in inheritance tax, than live the end of their lives in comfort.
My gran had a house worth £800,000, and yet lived in pain and squalor, cooped up in a tiny council run home, rather than sell her house and live her last years in luxury and comfort. She just would not, under any circumstances, pay for any of her care. We talked to her, showed her the brochures of nice places, did all the sums, all she would have to do is sell her home, or release equity, she could have lived a wonderful end of her life. But she would not pay out of her own pocket. She made the choice to rot in an underfunded care home, never going out, because of principle, the principle that the government would pay. The tax man came knocking the moment she died, and he took the money instead.
It should cost this or more, to pay nurses wages. But who should pay it is the q.
People who are full time carers from looking after a relative or their own child (single parents) should be paid a yearly wage thats at least 30-60k a year. It’s a full time job and they shouldn’t have to have two jobs to survive. Maybe pay someone to make sure they’re doing a good job and it’s not abusive
Crazy it’s £1.5k week, yet they pay carers minimum wage, just shows the profit big corps must be making
The system’s not broken, it does what it was designed to do.
It looks after the wealthy, the rest you poors just be happy you might one day be able to retire if you work real, real hard until you’re idk, like 70 or some shit. If you can’t do that, well, I guess you just need to be related to someone with money who’ll die soon.
Meanwhile the person doing that care is 9/10 on minimum wage
From the sounds of it, this is neither a life worth living for Jo nor her husband; who in good conscience would subsidise such an existence?
15 comments
That sounds about right? £78k a year for that level of care. You can’t expect the staff to work for nothing. They deserve higher pay.
“Dr Jo Wilson was a high-flying international executive before she was diagnosed with dementia two years ago, aged 66”
Should have saved for her private pension.
No pity at all for this. The state pension is all she should get (like everyone else in the country).
The problem with social care is that any time the Tories try and actually fund it, their pensioner voters rebel against them.
TM’s “dementia tax” nearly lost them an election on it’s own.
The article mentions that the costs will eventually wipe out their home but this isn’t true. A jointly owned property is disregarded when calculating assets for social care fees as long as the spouse is still living there. The only reason why it would be included would be if it wasn’t jointly owned, i.e., the dementia patient owned it solely. In which case he’s put himself in a precarious position that he should have addressed years ago.
I work for Adult Social Services. The amount of people who think the state should pay for everything is astounding and some people will go to great lengths to avoid paying for care. We get the ‘Ive paid my stamp” argument frequently. We need a culture change in this country on how we approach social care in terms of saving for it. Or we need to accept massive tax increases. It’s not going to resolve without money.
I was watching BBC Breakfast this morning with my nan, who has dementia and whom I care for, and was hoping to find a link to the video report they broadcast in this article. I think that was a more important piece, at least a great companion piece to this article.
Whilst my current experience of carers coming to visit is mixed like Bill’s here, my own experience working as a carer a decade ago mirrored that of the woman in the broadcast. Not enough time allocated to calls, pressure to keep on time and get to the next call, working over to ensure a service user is receiving the care they need — or facing the choice of having to leave them so you can get to the next call. All whilst paying a good chunk out of pocket for your own fuel to get to calls and on minimum wage or barely above it.
In a decade nothing has changed. If anything it is worse. Much worse.
One example: yesterday we learned my nan, who is bed bound and doubly incontinent, had only been allocated one continence pad per day. How did we learn this? When we called to ask for more after a month. This is not something unique to her. What are people supposed to do if they can’t afford more pads? Are we supposed to leave my Nan in a soiled pad all day? They understand how skin breaks down. It’s abhorrent.
This is genuinely an effect of the Tory Party’s policies, and older folk continue to vote for this not seeing that it is them who will end up receiving the lacklustre care — which is degrading and inhumane.
I have to stop this here before I completely explode on this. I don’t have the time nor the energy to spare, which I guess is a by Tory design, or at the very least an added bonus, to stop us from complaining and really making a noise about the state of the health services.
I wish the left would attack private care home owners like they attack landlords. I know a girl whose boyfriends parents are private care home owners and they have given them money to purchase a 700k house. She’s only 26…..
Why does it cost £1500 a week? Care home staff are not well paid.
Are residential homes making a massive profit?
Its always sad to read about someone getting dementia my neighbour has it who lives alone and his elderly family are over regularly they must be exhausted. The system is broken and must be fixed
As it stands for me my social care if I need it will likely be a large dose of fentanyl or spending my savings if I have any on a one way flight to Switzerland. As unless there is massive changes people will face an undignified time homebound and lonely.
Its fucking maddening the govt bin the social care plan of 4.5bn a year yet have pissed away 65 billion **in a day** through incompetence by spooking the markets.
The whole system is broken. You’ve got economically disadvantaged older people who can’t afford any care. You’ve got very wealthy, asset rich, elderly people that won’t pay for their care. The pensioners won’t vote for higher taxes. But they do vote for more spending to their benefit.
The entire expectation of ‘cradle to grave’ was prefixed on retiring at 60-65, living for a decade, and spending ,at most, 3-5 years in care. They all smoked, their houses we’re riddled with carcinogens, they never exercised and heart disease was endemic. Now older people retire at 65 and the majority will live for another 20-30 years, requiring varying degrees of support. But they no way near paid enough into the system over their working lives. Not even close. Whenever you read comments from pensioners they all absolutely believe they’re entitled to free care and top quality medical and social care. Because that was what they were promised!! No government will ever tell them the truth, that they will have to pay more, that they didn’t economically produce enough, didn’t create enough wealth, that the country is moving towards bankruptcy with a smaller and smaller younger work force, working longer and harder, to pay for their care.
And it’s unjust. It causing genertional strife. The pensioners demand greater and greater sacrifices from the younger workers, to pay for it all. And yet every young person knows that they’ll have to pay their own way through life. That they won’t get very much at all at the end. It’s patently unfair and unjust, that pensioners with millions in assets, mainly property, refuse to contribute. Their identity is so wrapped up in hoarding equity and assets, they’d rather the tax man gets it all in inheritance tax, than live the end of their lives in comfort.
My gran had a house worth £800,000, and yet lived in pain and squalor, cooped up in a tiny council run home, rather than sell her house and live her last years in luxury and comfort. She just would not, under any circumstances, pay for any of her care. We talked to her, showed her the brochures of nice places, did all the sums, all she would have to do is sell her home, or release equity, she could have lived a wonderful end of her life. But she would not pay out of her own pocket. She made the choice to rot in an underfunded care home, never going out, because of principle, the principle that the government would pay. The tax man came knocking the moment she died, and he took the money instead.
It should cost this or more, to pay nurses wages. But who should pay it is the q.
People who are full time carers from looking after a relative or their own child (single parents) should be paid a yearly wage thats at least 30-60k a year. It’s a full time job and they shouldn’t have to have two jobs to survive. Maybe pay someone to make sure they’re doing a good job and it’s not abusive
Crazy it’s £1.5k week, yet they pay carers minimum wage, just shows the profit big corps must be making
The system’s not broken, it does what it was designed to do.
It looks after the wealthy, the rest you poors just be happy you might one day be able to retire if you work real, real hard until you’re idk, like 70 or some shit. If you can’t do that, well, I guess you just need to be related to someone with money who’ll die soon.
Meanwhile the person doing that care is 9/10 on minimum wage
From the sounds of it, this is neither a life worth living for Jo nor her husband; who in good conscience would subsidise such an existence?