FOOL'S EYE VIEW
The Real Cost Of Caring For Elderly Parents

By Jane Mack (TMFJane)
January 20, 2004

My husband has had a rather stressful morning. Actually, it's been pretty stressful since Christmas ever since we realised that we really had to do something to get some help in the home for his elderly parents who are now both housebound.

It wasn't so bad when it was just my mum-in-law who was confined to the house. My father-in-law was still sprightly enough to pop out to get his daily newspaper and to potter around town for a bit to pick up the odd necessity. But at Christmas he was diagnosed with cancer and has been too ill to do anything other than shuffle around the house on a Zimmer frame. In fact, my husband's had to rearrange their sitting room because with both of them now using Zimmer frames, there wasn't exactly a lot of room to manoeuvre!

It would almost be funny if it weren't so depressing for all concerned.

Anyway, yesterday, someone came round to assess their needs for home care. My father-in-law would like some help with getting up, washed and dressed in the mornings so that's what I'm looking into at the moment.

Interestingly, we've been advised against going to our local Social Services to find a carer. They charge more than local private agencies and you can't exactly fire them if they don't meet the standard of care you'd like. Quite apart from anything else they outsource the work to the private agencies anyway. No wonder they charge more - there's that extra layer of bureaucracy to pay for!

They also seem to charge lots of different prices for different things whereas the private agencies seem to charge a flat rate for time spent. For example, my local Social Services charges £15.50 an hour for 'Personal Home Care' (washing and dressing etc) and £10.50 an hour for 'Community Support' (doing the shopping and picking up prescriptions).

I received a brochure from a private agency this morning. Judging from their price list, the carer costs would be £9.20 an hour on weekdays, £10.92 at weekends and £18.08 on bank holidays. And they'll do anything that's necessary during that time.

Naturally, this care needs to be paid for somehow. As a general rule of thumb, if you've got more than £19,500 capital and/or savings you will get no help with the cost of your carer. This doesn't include your home as long as you continue to live in it and note that it is only your assets and income that are assessed – anything your spouse personally owns is irrelevant.

However, if you need some sort of personal care and you're over 65, then you may be able to claim Attendance Allowance which can be worth between £38.30 and £57.20 a week. It's tax-free and is not means-tested but is based on the level of care you need and whether it is day-time or night-time care, or both. If you're under 65 you can usually claim Disability Living Allowance instead.

My in-laws will almost certainly both be entitled to claim at least the lower rate of Attendance Allowance so their joint allowance of £76.60 should cover the cost of a carer to come in seven mornings a week.

It'll start hitting their pockets if they require any further help with someone popping in at lunchtime and/or in the evening to check on things. Although you don't have to have someone come in for a full hour, a half-hour visit costs almost as much (£8.70 for half an hour compared to £9.20 for an hour in the example quoted above).

Half-hour visits three times a day would amount to £27.60 a day. Multiply that by 365 days and you'd be looking at a minimum outlay of just over £10,000 a year - less with the benefit of Attendance Allowance.

And what about my husband's stressful morning? He took the morning off work to take his father to a hospital appointment. Initially, these will be fortnightly and this morning it took three hours of his time. So, we're currently wondering whether he should take the morning off work every fortnight or should we work on the basis that a carer could do it at a cost of about £30 a time?

I may have outlined the financial costs of care above but, in fact, this article isn't really about money. Yes, thanks to having a decent pension income, his parents can afford to pay for care and, thank goodness for it. They can at least make choices.

My husband's dilemma is that he could do everything a professional carer could and, indeed, he would like to. After all, he's been doing it for the last month and, as he points out, of all the carers they could have traipsing through their door every day, he's the one who would care the most - so why should his parents have to pay a stranger to do it?

He's got a point. And people can and do care for ageing parents but it is often at great personal cost to themselves and their own home lives. My husband is already exhausted and stressed out from dropping in on them every day and dashing off to pick up prescriptions and taking his father to endless doctor's appointments. But if he doesn't do it himself he'll feel guilty. If he continues to do it his parents will feel guilty - they already think they're a burden to him.

The one person who is having trouble accepting that it's time to call in the professionals for help is my husband. He's not happy about it at all. And, to my mind, that's the real cost of caring for elderly parents - the emotional and not the financial aspects.

Find out more about Pensions; More Money for Older People; Help the Aged; Age Concern