Laure

Hi @andyburnham I spoke today to a friend whose father had Alzheimer’s. He told me that last year the council was paying around £900 a week for carers to visit four times a day, providing a combined total of about two hours of care per day. That works out at approximately £64 per hour of delivered care to the agency. While many care workers providing the actual visits are paid around £16 per hour. For comparison, an experienced NHS Band 6 nurse earns around £20 per hour. Why are taxpayers paying such high rates to private care providers when the frontline workers themselves receive a much smaller proportion of the cost? Would a publicly provided model, with qualified nurses and care workers employed directly by the NHS or local authorities, provide better value and more consistent support, rather than relying on care agencies that often deliver short, offer fragmented visits, charge a fortune, and make extortionate profits?