It was the same for us - became obvious straight away that anything offered by our local authority was going to cost £20 per hour. We didn't bother to fill out the (very long!) forms to start the assessment. To be honest I was too worn out to bother ! We paid a local ch for one day a weeks daycare, and paid an agency for one day care at home . Both came to far less than the local authority offer and set up very easily.
I think the post code lottery, of available care, and whether it's free or not, annoys me more than anything else.
If you have Alzheimer's, and your spouse is exhausted, it shouldn't matter whether you live in Cambridge, Cardiff or Cleethorpes, but it does.
Every LA only has a "cake" of care available to cut, and if someone's getting a whopping big slice, and others aren't even getting crumbs, it's so unfair. And the size of the cake varies from LA to LA as well, depending on where you live.