Battle for care home spaces as families face average fees of £1,160 a week

Families face a battle to secure care home spaces for their loved ones and the funding to keep them there as the average fee for residential care hits £1,160 a week.

Data released by carehome.co.uk – a comparison site which helps people search for residential care – reveals older people are nearly a third more likely to go into a home in January after spending Christmas with their family.

Over 375,000 more people used the website to search for care homes in January 2024 compared with the month before – the latest available data shows. In 2023, the number of people on the site rose by over 342,000 and in 2022, by just over 258,000 on the previous month.

It is is expected that this month’s data will continue that trend, amid fears that the supply of care home places is failing to keep pace with demand.

There are also concerns around the rising costs of private social care – with residential care in the UK now costing an average £1,160 a week.

Out of over 38,441 care seekers who made enquiries at carehome.co.uk between November 2023 and October 2024, 21 per cent did not know how their care would be funded. As few as 16 per cent reported they were able to access local authority funding.

Caroline Abraham, charity director at Age UK, said a spike in admissions in January was not surprising after extended families spent time together during the festive break – but she added that residential care is not the only option.

“If an older person is in declining health it can be really noticeable to younger relatives who have not seen them for some time,” she told The i Paper. “And [it can be] actually quite shocking.”

She advised families to look at all the options available for ensuring an older person gets the support they need. “A care home is certainly one option but there are others too that enable an older person to remain living in their own home; for example, visiting care or live-in care,” she said.

Recent analysis by the Homes of Commons Library found the average number of pensioners per care home has soared 14 per cent from 761 in 2018 to 867 in 2024. The number of pensioners per available care home bed has increased 6 per cent from 25 to 27.

Some 88 per cent of constituencies saw a rise in the number of over 65s per care home.

Abraham said: “Going into a care home is a big move for any older person, emotionally and financially, and very few people ever move back to their own home again.

“It is absolutely the right option for some older people in some situations, especially if they have very significant personal care needs but in most cases there are other options worth looking at too.

“Crucially, the older person should always be in the driving seat over any decisions about their care and support, unless they lack mental capacity due to dementia or some other factor.”

Last week, the Government announced its plan for social care reform which will involve immediate investment to help people stay in their own homes for longer and an independent commission, chaired by Baroness Casey, to look at long-term structural reform.

But the announcement sparked a backlash from care leaders who criticised the length of time it will take to deliver any change – with no long-term recommendations until at least 2028.

Any changes the Government supports will take even longer to implement.

As a result, Care England chief executive Professor Martin Green said the plan “risks becoming yet another report that gathers dust while the sector crumbles”.

Abraham said the fact that funding for social care would not be addressed until the second phase of the commission was a “major concern”.

Successive governments have promised to fix social care but all have failed. It is now almost 15 years since Sir Andrew Dilnot recommended a cap on care costs to meet the challenges of an ageing society, but his reforms were never implemented.

What was The Dilnot Report?

In July 2011, The Dilnot Commission published a series of recommendations on how to deliver a fair, affordable and sustainable funding system for social care in England. These were:

• A costs cap of £35,000 – Once someone has reached this limit in their personal contributions the state will pick up all ongoing care costs. People living in a care home will have their ongoing living costs capped at £7,000-£10,000 per year.
• A more generous means-testing threshold – This should be set at £100,000 for people in a care home, which is a large increase from the current threshold of £23,250. This meant that more people will be eligible for state support towards the cost of care. Those who have assets between £14,250 and £100,000 will pay a contribution towards their care, but costs will be met in part by the state.
• Reducing the postcode lottery – Dilnot also proposed that there should be a national threshold for care eligibility. This means that there will be one level of eligibility across all councils, which will remove the local variability that exists currently.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “The social care system in this country is failing families at a time when they need our support, which is why we have tasked the Casey Commission with helping us build a National Care Service that is fair and affordable.

“The Casey Commission will publish its first report next year and we have set out immediate actions to support people receiving care, including increased funding to allow disabled people to stay in their homes. Alongside this, we are giving local authorities up to an additional £3.7bn in 2025-26, including a £880m increase in the social care grant to support the sector.”