Increase in Care Home Fees 2024
- Thread starter Tilly13
- Start date
When her assets fall below certain amount the local authority will pay the fees. Speak to citizens advice.
Same here. My dad's fees have just gone up again, this time by 7.5%, but in the 2 years he has lived in the home they have gone up 4 times, totalling almost a 40% increase since he moved in! I accept minimum wage has risen, inflation has been high, energy cost too, but really the issue is the size of profit the owners of these private care homes want to keep for themselves, and the enormous dividends they pay themselves. I looked the care home company up at Companies House - their accounts made for interesting reading and contradict all the reasons we have been spun by them over the last 2 years to justify 'unavoidable' and 'necessary' fee increases. It's immoral, and exploits the vulnerable people that need care.
Publicity around the raising of the minimum wage for care workers neglects to point out that most people in care homes are self funders.
That's interesting Rayreadynow, where did you get that information from?
The the most up to date estimated figures available from the ONS regarding care home self-funders give a different picture:
From 1 March 2022 to 28 February 2023, there was a statistically significant 3.1% increase in the number of care home residents (372,035); of these, 37.0% (137,480) were self-funders, which is not a significant change since last year.
The South East remained the region with the highest proportion of self-funders in care homes (47.5%), which is statistically significantly higher than the North East, which had the lowest proportion of self-funders (26.4%).
Care homes providing care for older people remained the care homes with the highest proportion of self-funders (48.9%), which was statistically significantly higher than all other care home types; care homes for younger adults remained the lowest (2.0%).
If interested, there are lots of other statistics too about ratios of self-funders based on information such as geographical areas, type/size of care home, CQC ratings:
Care homes and estimating the self-funding population, England - Office for National Statistics
An estimation of the size of the self-funding population in care homes in England. Provides data covering the period 1 March 2022 to 28 February 2023, broken down by geographic variables and care home characteristics.
www.ons.gov.uk
Thank you for the ONS link, very useful. This does not include those people who also contribute their pensions to care fees and are not classified as self-funders by the Local Authority.
That is because they are not self funding. Anyone who goes into residential care will need to contribute their state pension if they are being funded by the local authority. This is very different to someone who is self funding. A state pension pays for a persons living costs ( it may not be anywhere near enough but that a conversation for another time) When a person is in residential care, they do not need to pay heating bills, council tax, food bills and all the other household items 😊. Obviously there is the personal allowance that is made for buying clothes , toiletries etc. ( again it is probably not enough)
The PWD does not have these bill to pay on their own in their own home but as residents their money goes towards the running of the home collectively.
A state pension is paid by the state, so when the state needs to pay for a persons care, they require that pension back and this is not self funding.
But if you are self funding you still have to use your state pension to pay for care. We all know its just not fair on those people who through no fault of there own require care.
