Care Home fees.

Comms69 wrote: »

£25,000 a year FT equiv - to care for your own parent??

Sounds like it. So?


Given you posed it as a question, are you suggesting that people's time becomes less valuable when they are working for a family member?

The problem I see isnt an attorney using a donor's money to pay for enhanced care should that be reasonably justified as being in the donor's best interest.


The doubtful part is the attorney paying themselves. It is difficult to see how the wife is going to dispassionately check that the carer (herself) is actually value for money and is working the contracted hours (is there a contract?) to the standard required etc etc. Can she sack herself? As an ex-attorney I would not have wanted to put myself in that impossible position.


If extra care is required it is much better to pay a professional even at greater expense.


Perhaps it is relevent that an attorney cannot pay themselves for their time carrying out their duties as an attorney. The most they can do is to claim documented reasonable expenses.

Surely the right issue to complain yet gain to the people who run the sheltered home accommodation and to the official inspecting body for them whoever that is. Is it a council Care home? Yiu should be comp,ai 8ng to your local council officials and making a formal complaint to your local council collars if the staff are doing an inadequate job.

But before complaining list the specifics of what is being adequately and try to get some collective feedback from other residents or their relatives as
well. You will have a stronger case if you make a collective complaint. It certainly sounds as if supercisio. of care providers there is inadequate and this is what yiu need to be addressing.

Sounds as if your wife had more than enough on her plate to cope with already without taking on an even bigger workload.

Norma_Norman wrote: »

My Mother in Law suffers from dementia and lives in sheltered accommodation. She pays all her rent, care costs, etc.

My wife is getting upset because the carers are not very good carers. They don't launder properly, don't clean the flat properly etc. We feel that it would be better if my wife did certain things like the above and say helped her have a shower things would be better. We would still leave a lot of things like taking her to and from meals in the resident lounge/dining room to the carers.
Now, if my wife did this she would have to give up her part time job and that is not economically viable. So the thought is that if she took £500 per month to compensate for her loss of salary AND payment for providing care would this cause problems in the future when the time comes for her to enter a care home. That is, would the Local Authority try to claw back the payments my wife would receive?

You need to check the carers contracts as up here I can't find a care company who will empty a washing machine. They can load one and turn it on but emptying and hanging a washing isn't considered "care".

Same goes for cleaning, they will clean a work surface to make sure it's sanitary before using it to prepare food and then wipe it down again after use but they won't clean a whole kitchen. They will do a light dust but won't hoover.

Carers provide care, they aren't cleaners. It sounds like your mother in law doesn't need replacement help she needs supplementary help. Personal carers to deal with personal care (bathing, washing, meals, medications), cleaners to deal with the house (hoovering, dusting, mopping), family to change beds (cleaners won't do this), a laundry service to deal with laundry if the cleaner won't do it (some will, some won't).

You might be able to employ a "personal assistant" and there may even be funding called direct payments from social services (means tested - strict rules on using family) and PAs have a more broad range of tasks that they'll do so they might pick up all the tasks that the carers can't do (or possibly just don't have time to do).

Some care companies are just hopeless, if there are problems with the actual care you need to complain in writing, tell them how you want them to improve and when you want a written response but with the above I'd expect them to say "the company cannot reasonably clean a house, shower and give Mrs X her medicine then take her to the dining room in the allotted hour and as we are a care company we have to prioritise medication, hygiene and nutrition above cleaning".

As for using your position as POA to access money to pay yourself as a carer, are you a carer? Do you have an NVQ in care of the elderly? Manual handling certification? Medicine dispensing certification? Insurance? Delirium training? Do you know how to handle the tax and national insurance of being a self employed carer? Are you getting insurance?