Respite care in Gloucestershire

It depends on the kind of respite. A live-in carer who stays in the house costs about £171 a day, or £1,197 a week, in Gloucestershire. Visits of two hours a day at around £20 an hour come to £40 a day, or £280 a week. A carer sleeping in overnight is £160 to £190 a night. For a care home, the standard residential fee across the UK is about £1,160 a week, and a short respite stay can be priced higher. How respite costs compare across the country puts these beside the national figures.

For a live-in carer who stays in the house, a week is typically £1,197 in Gloucestershire, so a fortnight is about £2,394. For daily visits instead, carers here advertise around £20 an hour, so two hours a day comes to roughly £280 a week. A local agency charges about £33 an hour for the same visits, because you are paying the agency as well as the carer. Nothing is charged until you book.

On the national figures, yes, though we cannot give a local care home figure because too few homes near you publish one. Nationally a care home place is around £1,160 a week against £1,120 for a live-in carer at home. A care home also charges per person, so a couple pays twice where one live-in carer covers both.

It depends on who is free. You are talking to self-employed carers directly, so there is no agency rota to wait for, and some carers can start within a few days. If your break is already in the diary, particularly over school holidays or Christmas, it is worth lining someone up now. You can message carers and agree dates before committing to anything.

Possibly. If you look after someone regularly you are entitled to a carer's assessment from your council, which is separate from any assessment of the person you care for, and it can lead to funding for a break. It is worth asking even if the person you look after pays for their own care, because the assessment is about your needs, not theirs. How to fund respite care goes through the options.

Whatever you normally do, agreed in advance and written down before you go. That can cover personal care, medication prompts, meals, keeping the house going and company, plus anything specific like a hoist or a night routine. A live-in carer sleeps in the house and is there overnight. If the person you look after is up several times a night, say so early, because that needs a waking night rather than a live-in arrangement and is priced differently.

Tell us and we will help you look for someone else, although a replacement carer cannot be guaranteed. We are an introductory service rather than an agency: we do not employ the carers and we do not run a rota, so there is no bank of staff to send. For a longer break it is sensible to line up a second carer you have already spoken to, so there is somebody who knows the situation.