Outrage as pensioner sees care home fees doubling to £125,000 a year

May 23, 2012   Carers, Older care

Sandford Station retirement village is charging a 76-year-old resident £125,000 a YEAR in fees

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 11:48, 23 May 2012 | UPDATED: 11:59, 23 May 2012

Rocketing costs: Jacquie Heal, 44, from Bristol with the paperwork from the care home Sherwood Lodge where her mother is a resident

The family of a pensioner are furious after her care home fees were more than doubled to a staggering £125,000 a year.

Pamela Watts, 76, is currently paying £3,543 a month out of her savings to live at a care home in Sandford Station Retirement Village in Somerset.

But her fees are now being increased to £10,355 per month, of which the Government contributes just £432.

The home, run by the St Monica Trust, says Mrs Watts’ fees have increased because of her complex and challenging needs.

She has been given until July to decide whether to pay the increased fees – or move out.

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Devoted wife fears she could lose lifeline

May 22, 2012   Cancer, Carers, dementia, ukcuts

COMMITMENT … loyal wife Betty Greenwell is determined to take care of ailing husband Wilf.

By PAUL KELLY
Published on Tuesday 22 May 2012 17:30

A LOYAL wife of a dementia sufferer with cancer has told of her fears over a vital support service they could lose.

The Home Support Service provides a lifeline for Betty Greenwell, 75, of Lilburn Close, East Boldon.

Betty is a devoted carer at home for her dementia-stricken husband Wilf, 86.

The couple were both widowed when they married 13 years ago and made a pledge to care for each other ‘in sickness and in health’.

It’s a commitment loving Betty is determined to see through as her husband also battles bowel cancer.

But she is angry that the future of the support service, funded jointly by South Tyneside Council and the borough’s Primary Care Trust (PCT), is uncertain.

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Time to wipe away the whining about paid carers

May 22, 2012   Carers, Older care

The quality and quantity of care that’s on offer for older people was unimaginable a couple of generations ago

 

We need to connect the arm’s-length overclass with the hands-on reality of being a carer, says Stewart Dakers.

Doris, myself and Charlie are in the cafe across from the bus stop discussing the latest care home scandal involving the abuse of residents by carers. The newspapers are full of recriminations, interviews with ministers, Age UK and emoting relatives. It will not be long before I am “in care”, and so I have an interest in such incidents.

It has often appeared to me that there is an unpleasant taste of self-righteousness among the prosecution, and that they are out of touch with the realities of the care situation. Charlie, as usual, does not mess about: “They’re all bloody foreigners, them nurses. Don’t understand our ways.”

He’s spot on, though not in the way he means. The care staff don’t understand our ways, because most of them come from cultures that view the dislocation of elderly people from their families as barbaric.

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