Bluebird Care St Albans
St. Albans, Hertfordshire
GoodCQC, Feb 2020
- Caring for adults under 65 yrs
- Dementia
- Caring for adults over 65 yrs
- +1 more
- Hourly rate
- not published
- Pays carers for travel
- not published
- Shortest visit
- not published
Elderly care in the St Albans council area
There are 26 elderly care services in the St Albans council area registered with the Care Quality Commission. 12 carry a published CQC rating, and 10 of those are rated Good or Outstanding. The other 14 are unrated, which usually means they have not been inspected since registering rather than that anything is wrong. Privately arranged care is quoted by the hour, and the Homecare Association puts the minimum a provider must charge in 2026-27 at £34.42, or about £481.88 a week for two half-hour visits a day. Adult social care in the St Albans council area is arranged by Hertfordshire, which paid providers £27.00 an hour in 2023-24, the 5th highest of 150 councils in England and 27% above the £21.19 median. That is 26 of the 27 home care services across the St Albans local authority. Your council decides what care you are entitled to and what it pays towards, so this is the area that matters for funding.
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Scope Care Services Ltd
Harpenden, Hertfordshire
Not yet rated · on the register 3 years
- Caring for children (0 - 18yrs)
- Sensory impairments
- Services for everyone
- +7 more
- Hourly rate
- not published
- Pays carers for travel
- not published
- Shortest visit
- not published
Elderly care in St Albans: questions people ask
- How much does elderly care cost in the St Albans council area?
- Agencies in the St Albans council area quote by the hour after an assessment, so there is no single price. The Homecare Association calculates that a provider needs to charge at least £34.42 an hour in 2026-27 to pay careworkers the statutory minimum for all their working time and run a compliant business. Two half-hour visits a day at that rate is roughly £481.88 a week. Hertfordshire paid £27.00 an hour for the care it commissioned in 2023-24.
- Will the council pay for elderly care in the St Albans council area?
- Hertfordshire can arrange and fund care after a needs assessment, which is free and which anyone can request. What you contribute depends on a separate financial assessment. It paid providers an average of £27.00 an hour in 2023-24, the 5th highest of 150 councils in England. The Homecare Association's minimum sustainable price is £34.42 for 2026-27. Those are different years, so treat the pair as context rather than a like-for-like gap. What a council pays shapes which agencies will take council-funded work at all.
- Which elderly care services in the St Albans council area are rated best?
- 12 of the 26 services in the St Albans council area carry a published CQC rating and 10 of those, 83%, are rated Good or Outstanding. 1 is rated Outstanding, the top grade: Harrall Care Services Limited t/a Home Instead Senior Care. A rating describes the service on the day it was inspected, so check the report date as well as the word.
- Is the St Albans council area well served for elderly care?
- 26 of the 27 home care services in the St Albans council area are registered to support this, 96%, against 89% across England. That is better served than most places. Registration is permission rather than specialisation, so it sets the size of the list rather than its quality.
- How do I choose a elderly care agency in the St Albans council area?
- Start with what the regulator publishes, then ask what it cannot tell you: who would actually visit, whether it is the same carer each time, what happens when that person is ill, and how long a call really lasts. 14 of the 26 services in the St Albans council area carry no published verdict at all, so for those the questions are the only evidence you have. Every service here comes from the public register, and contacting one costs nothing: we take no fee and no commission.