Live in carer costs

Kirkmain

Can someone tell me the ball park costs for a live in carer? 50k a year? Trying to work out how much money one needs to set aside in case of needing care but wants to avoid institutionalisation.

Is there a current easy access price list someone can link

Keep_pedalling

Depends on the level of care required and the part of the country you live, but our long term financial plan includes the possibility of each of us needing £80k pa in live in carers. 

newatc

I have lived in an area with a significant number of aged residents (includes me now) for many years and seen many neighbours going into homes or having live-in carers. This is not scientific but I have come to the conclusion (which is I think is understandable) that those with live-in carers live far longer than those in care homes. 
That should be taken into your account in your financial planning.
For what it's worth, I have changed my mind from using living-in carers having coming to the conclusion that I wouldn't want to extend my life once I need 24 hour care. That said every situation, particularly with family issues, is different.

JGB1955

My father had live-in carers for 18 months before it was suggested that he needed to 'double-up' on his care.  Carers only work about 8 hours a day and he began to need care at night too.  The cost (7 years ago) was in the region of £800 per week.  He still (obviously) had to maintain his house, pay all the household bills, pay for both his food and that of his carer(s).  An admission to hospital was followed by the (then) inevitable transfer to a Nursing Home.  The costs were significantly less and the care far superior to that provided in his own home.  24 hour care at home would have been well over £2000 per week.

Savvy_Sue

It's going to depend how many hours care you're looking for. You might be able to start with something like HomeShare, where you offer accommodation to a younger person in exchange for an agreed amount of help and support. 

If you actually want carers in a more formal agreement, then your starting point might be that National Living Wage for the over 20s is £11.44 ph from April (and you may get what you pay for). If you needed someone available 24/7, then you might want 3 carers each day, each working a 9 hour day (to allow for handover periods), and each of them would be entitled to paid holidays and at least Statutory Sick Pay, so you'd need at least one other person for that. 

£112,741 = 3 carers 24/7
£8649 = basic holiday cover, but then these people are also entitled to pro rata holiday pay but can't get my head round how much that would be ...
£121,390 total, but you need to add onto that employer costs, including

13.8% National Insurance (that's possibly pre-budget figures) and
3% Pension contributions

Some of my searching indicates that you need to multiply someone's salary by between 1.4 and 1.7 to get the true cost of employing them.

So we are into mind-blowing figures (for me at least) ... but if you actually need someone there 24/7, is home care definitely the best option? 

Obviously divide my figures by 3 if you think you'll just need someone there overnight, or for day time, or twice a day, or whatever. 

QrizB

There's just shy of 9000 hours in a year, so the minimum cost of covering that at minimum wage will be circa £100k pa.

Although, if you're providing accommodation for a genuinely live-in carer, you can offset the value of that:

https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-accommodation

Assuming you're paying four* carers (and are able to provide all four with suitable accommodation), that would be worth roughly £14k pa. So £86k pa in wages.

* Four carers let's you run a two-12h-shift, four-on four-off working pattern which satisfies the Working Time regs. You'd still need holiday pay and cover arrangements.

Kirkmain

There are lots of households where I see SE Asian carers usually Filipino. How are these arranged? Do they cost less than local carers?

Albermarle

The carers we have for a family member are from an African country. The care needed is not 24/7 or even daily, it is just regular help really.
They are supplied by an agency that is run by people from the same country. ( all council approved, CQC rated etc )   They organise the work visas, find them somewhere to live, transport them around. I get the impression that the carers are committed to work for the agency for a set period as part of the deal they have.
Health and Care Worker visa: Overview - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The cost is similar to a previous agency, using more local carers, although these ones are more reliable. Mainly because they have few commitments locally as their families are still in Africa. 

Nebulous2

It's a while since I've been involved, but I've come across people with live-in care through an agency. At that time, about. 5 years ago, a ball park figure was £1000 a week. Tasks were agreed, they needed time off, you certainly can't expect one person to work 24/7 and they did 1 month on / 1 month off. 

There was certainly a degree of fudging of employment rights and minimum wage legislation, but that suited both parties. I can't recollect, but the carers may have been self-employed, which would cut out a lot of that. 

The carer I spoke to said it really suited her, as it drastically reduced her living costs, but boundaries had to be maintained, to allow her sufficient downtime and rest during her month on. 

Floss

Kirkmain said:

There are lots of households where I see SE Asian carers usually Filipino. How are these arranged? Do they cost less than local carers?

They are very likely employed by an agency. Their ethnic origin doesn't exclude them from being paid NMW the same as any other employee.

Albermarle

Floss said:

Kirkmain said:

There are lots of households where I see SE Asian carers usually Filipino. How are these arranged? Do they cost less than local carers?

They are very likely employed by an agency. Their ethnic origin doesn't exclude them from being paid NMW the same as any other employee.

Yes the reason there are foreign carers in the UK is to fill staff shortages, not to undercut wages.