Care.com reveals the easiest and hardest cities in the UK to find in-home elderly care.
For many elderly people there comes a point when it is no longer possible to manage their household on their own. Sooner or later they need help.
However, with an ageing population and a desperate lack of professional carers, more and more relatives are being forced to step in and look after their elderly and disabled family members. While this noble act provides great relief to those needing care, it can have undue effect on the life of the unpaid carers.
One of the biggest challenges is juggling work and care. According to extensive polling by YouGov on behalf of Carers UK, this affects approximately 4.87 million people. That is one in seven workers in the UK.
2.6 million of the UK’s workforce have even had to give up work to care for their loved ones. That’s an increase of 12% since 2013, according to the Carers UK survey. As a result, skilled workers are being taken out of the workforce and have to support themselves with the carer’s allowance which hardly replaces their previous salaries. What’s more, being a carer can be an isolating and lonely experience. Many carers lose the company that is found through social events, interacting with friends at work and, in many cases, they even feel like they lose their identity.
Relieving the burden
Finding an in home-carer for their relative is one way that family members can be relieved of the burden of providing care. In-home care involves having a caregiver come to your loved one’s home to help with a wide range of tasks. These include personal care, such as bathing, dressing, cooking, taking their arm as they get up from a chair and helping to keep track of their medications.
Care.com can help you find an in-home carer that will help with these tasks and allow you to experience the benefits of personalised care. In-home carers can be hired full or part-time, helping the primary caregiver to shoulder the burden of care and providing them the opportunity to continue working, at least part-time. With Care.com, you can browse carer profiles to see which carer has the necessary experience, certificates and references so you can make an informed decision.
With this in mind, the team at Care.com wanted to get a better picture of the elderly care situation in the UK and find out if some cities are easier to find an in-home carer than others. To answer that question, Care.com data analysts have identified the best cities for families to easily find an elderly carer. The more carers there are per job offer, the more likely it is that the family will find the most suitable carer for them. The less carers there are, the more families have to compete with each other to hire any caregiver at all.
So which cities are best for finding suitable elderly carers? If you live in Luton, Walsall or Dundee, you have the greatest chance of finding the best carer for your loved one. Take a look at our full rankings to see where in the UK your hometown places in the best cities for elderly care.
Where families have the best chances to find in-home elderly care
|
Rank |
Town |
Providers/Job |
|
1 |
Luton |
2.38 |
|
2 |
Walsall |
1.94 |
|
3 |
Dundee |
1.67 |
|
4 |
Bournemouth |
1.64 |
|
5 |
Coventry |
1.60 |
|
6 |
Derby |
1.57 |
|
7 |
Liverpool |
1.41 |
|
8 |
Newcastle Upon Tyne |
1.31 |
|
9 |
Aberdeen |
1.25 |
|
10 |
Leeds |
1.24 |
|
11 |
Stoke-on-Trent |
1.14 |
|
12 |
Doncaster |
1.14 |
|
13 |
Peterborough |
1.12 |
|
14 |
Croydon |
1.11 |
|
15 |
London |
1.10 |
|
16 |
Sheffield |
1.06 |
|
17 |
Swansea |
1.04 |
|
18 |
Manchester |
1.04 |
|
19 |
Bradford |
1.03 |
|
20 |
Belfast |
1.00 |
|
21 |
High Wycombe |
1.00 |
|
22 |
Swindon |
1.00 |
|
23 |
Poole |
1.00 |
|
24 |
Glasgow |
0.99 |
|
25 |
Preston |
0.95 |
|
26 |
Plymouth |
0.94 |
|
27 |
Birmingham |
0.92 |
|
28 |
Wolverhampton |
0.91 |
|
29 |
Blackpool |
0.90 |
|
30 |
Brighton |
0.90 |
|
31 |
Ipswich |
0.90 |
|
32 |
Northampton |
0.89 |
|
33 |
York |
0.89 |
|
34 |
Hull |
0.89 |
|
35 |
Nottingham |
0.88 |
|
36 |
Enfield |
0.72 |
|
37 |
Cardiff |
0.71 |
|
38 |
Slough |
0.69 |
|
39 |
Southampton |
0.66 |
|
40 |
Norwich |
0.64 |
|
41 |
Reading |
0.62 |
|
42 |
Wembley |
0.62 |
|
43 |
Uxbridge |
0.60 |
|
44 |
Edinburgh |
0.58 |
|
45 |
Leicester |
0.57 |
|
46 |
Harrow |
0.56 |
|
47 |
Cambridge |
0.55 |
|
48 |
Bristol |
0.51 |
|
49 |
Milton Keynes |
0.50 |
|
50 |
Colchester |
0.49 |
|
51 |
Exeter |
0.48 |
This report is based on Care.com’s proprietary data from 2018. The city rankings compare how likely a family is to find an in-home carer. The more carers per job, the greater the chances of finding the carer that suits the family best. To achieve realistic results, all cities with less than 15 job-seeking elderly carers and available jobs were excluded from the ranking.