Charges

In care homes across the UK, fees will vary significantly.  They start in general at around £600 per week. For the very deluxe homes, or for those requiring highly complex care, fees can rise to £2000 per week.

At Briarlea, our prices range from £925 to £1250 per week. Most of our residents will pay via a bank transfer every month.

This means we are not the cheapest home on the market. Instead, our prices seek to reflect the facilities on offer, our ongoing commitment to staff training and the work we do to encourage and maintain residents’ individuality, love of life and welfare. 

As Briarlea is an intimate-sized home, we don’t have some of the more glitzy facilities like cinema rooms, swimming pools or coffee shops on site. Some of our competitors have these luxuries, which allows them to charge higher fees.

For this reason, our prices are a little lower. However, we have a great reputation. Our service has been rated ‘good’ by the care regulator CQC twice in a row. We know we provide quality care and so we charge for this fairly.

Our care fees reflect the true costs involved in having the right care team, who are well trained and staffed in sufficient numbers, to properly care for you or your loved one.

For more detail about where we excel, delve into our latest CQC report and see for yourself.

Like the majority of care homes in the country, we don’t have a fixed, single care fee that everyone pays. The price that we charge you is bespoke. It takes into account a number of factors which are personal to your care. These can include:

The size of your room: At Briarlea, each of our rooms is individual. Some are warm and cosy, whereas others are grander in scale – with high ceilings and ornate chandeliers. All our bedrooms come with ensuite facilities.

However, some rooms (such as in our new wing) have also been fitted with the latest walk-in showers. These are designed to better aid our residents’ mobility. As you might expect, each room comes with its own price. And the room you choose will feed into our final calculation of your fees.

Your care needs: Perhaps the largest factor that will influence your care fees, is the level of support you need.
Many people at Briarlea remain fairly independent. For these individuals, our care team provide more of a hotel service: cooking, cleaning and doing their laundry. Offering support where it is needed, so they can enjoy their retirement.

However, others may have complex needs – like Dementia, or Parkinson’s. For these residents, our care team might have to offer more tailored care with their day-to-day activities. This is absolutely no problem for us. We’re carers after all; it’s what we do!

We want to give you the very best, bespoke support that you deserve – and in a safe environment. But to do this, we will need to ensure that we have enough staff on hand to help. When quoting care fees, we will therefore factor in the potential costs involved to support you or your loved one properly. As we will never compromise on the quality of our care.

State Support: If you have assets of under £23,000, you may be eligible for the government to pay some or all of your care fees. If you think this might apply to you, we encourage you to reach out to your local authority. You will need to undergo a means test to assess how much you could contribute to your fees.

Once this is settled, your local authority will assign you a social worker. They will call round a selection of homes to find out which home can cater to your needs.

Whilst you can certainly flag in advance where you would prefer to be placed, it’s important to note that the local authority will decide which are the final homes that are offered to you.

If you’re beginning to run out of money, first of all…do not panic. You may have heard scare stories of some homes who have asked residents to leave when they can no longer afford to pay. This is not something we would ever contemplate at Briarlea.

Instead, we will do everything we can to keep you here. Providing that it remains safe for us to continue meeting your needs. Several months before you envisage running out of funds, come and see us. We’ll then sit down with you and your local authority, to discuss what help is available. This often involves the state topping up or paying for the majority of your fees.

We hope so. But we appreciate that getting to grips with figures can often be tricky.

If you think Briarlea might be the right home for you, and would like more information on our care costs, please give us a call. We’d be more than happy to crunch some numbers with you.

And if you’re after some more resources before you make your decision, we recommend checking out Age UK. The charity’s website is packed full of helpful information about the costs involved in elderly care.