Our Fees Explained
At Heron House Taunton, we take great pride in ensuring our residents receive exceptional levels of care in a welcoming homely environment. We offer a high standard of personalised care that supports the mental, physical, and spiritual wellbeing of every resident, and we continually invest in our environment to ensure that our home is well presented and loved. Our fees are structured to support this and combine a fixed accommodation cost with your individually assessed care needs cost.
Fixed Accommodation Costs
The accommodation costs are based on the type and nature of room you choose (subject to current availability). They vary in size as well as facilities and are, therefore, priced individually. Premium features such as a larger room, ensuite wet room or a private patio will command a higher price. Rooms come fully furnished or can be personalised by bringing suitable items of furniture and mementos from home.
The weekly room fee includes items that you would expect as part of your day-to-day living such as 24 hour routine care, support and prompting with medication, your bedroom and access to all facilities, heating and electricity costs, all meals, snacks and drinks prepared daily by our in-house cooks, housekeeping and laundry services, liaison with outside agencies (e.g. medical practitioners and district nurses), activities and life enrichment programmes (including routine trips out of home) and Wi-Fi internet access.
Please note the Weekly Fee excludes the following (by way of example only): personal newspapers; personal flowers; smoking or vaping materials; personal toiletries; hairdressing; dental care; manicures; beauty treatments; podiatry care or special outings (e.g. theatre tickets). Furthermore, the fee does not cover accompanying you to medical or similar appointments. Where such accompaniment is arranged this will be charged separately at a reasonable rate.
Individually Assessed Care Needs
Although routine care is part of your fixed accommodation costs, some of our residents require ‘Extra’ or ‘Enhanced’ support. We are committed to meeting the individual needs of every resident to ensure their lives are rich and rewarding regardless of the level of support they require. To achieve our aspirations, we require the staff, time and resources to meet those with higher levels of need therefore it is necessary for this to be a considered in addition to the fixed accommodation costs.
Prior to and on your arrival our experienced staff will carry out a care needs assessment using a well-established dependency model. If the assessment does indicate the need for ‘Extra’ or ‘Enhanced’ support, we will explain to you why. This is a very personalised assessment so it is difficult to be very precise, but the following will give you a better understanding of the examples which indicates the need for ‘Extra’ or ‘Enhanced’ support:
Extra Dependency Care @ £85 per week
Extra care needs might include prompting to use the toilet, guidance and/or support when mobilising, assistance with washing and dressing, administration of medication and encouragement to eat and drink.
Enhanced Care @ £165 per week
Enhanced care needs might include the assistance of two staff with washing, dressing and continence needs, as well as the administration of medication, repositioning to minimise the risk of pressure damage and support to make decisions.
Requirements of affordability prior to admission
It is important that the placement is affordable to you. For that reason we ask for you to provide us with proof of means of payment (such as sufficient funds) to remain in the Home for a minimum of three years prior to entering into the placement contract. Where you are unable to provide this we may accept a guarantee of funding from a member of your family or other suitable person. In the event that you default on payment and do not rectify the situation after a written reminder, or you no longer have the means to pay, we may recover the fees from the agreed guarantor. We appreciate that there are a number of different ways of funding your care and, also, that this can change over time. Therefore it is important that you notify the Home as soon as possible should your funding or care circumstances change. This includes where you are assessed as eligible for local authority funding - the sum paid by the local authority is unlikely to cover the full Weekly Fee we charge, namely that the payment is made from the public purse and covers only standard care provision rather than residence in our well-appointed Home. In order to remain in our Home it will therefore be necessary to pay a “top up payment” to bridge the difference between the local authority payment and our fees. Any “top-up payment” is usually paid by another person, usually a relative or significant person in your life. We reserve the right to terminate the placement if no “top up payment’’ is provided and therefore it is important that you consider this when accepting a placement at our Home.
Please note that the information above is a summary only of some of the Terms and Conditions that apply to your placement at the Home. For full details please see our Resident Contract Terms. It is important that you read and understand the Resident Contract Terms before agreeing to move into our Home.
