When choosing a care home for your elderly relative, it is important to have all the information you can about the care and support options available to you before making a final decision. Hampshire has a wide choice of high quality care homes to fit your tailored needs and there are a host of useful resources to research and compare homes that can help with your decision process.When looking for a care home, there are lots of things to think about. Our national guide to Finding a Care Home covers everything you’ll need consider, when finding the right care home for your parent.
Finding Hampshire Care Homes
There are hundreds of care homes across Hampshire, each offering different services and tailored to different needs.
Age Space is working hard on making our own care home search engine to help you find the best care home options in your area. In the meantime, we recommend directories like carehome.co.uk.
Different Areas to Consider in Hampshire
With so many care home available across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, it’s important to take a look into what the cities and towns in the county have to offer. The following provides a brief overview of the major areas in Hampshire.
You may also want to check out our guide to Cultural Delights for the Elderly in Hampshire.
Portsmouth
Portsmouth is a waterfront city that is situated on the beautiful South coast. Portsmouth Port is the most connected international port in the UK, providing passenger routes to France, Spain and the Channel Islands. The city has famously great shopping and leisure facilities at Gunwharf Quays and is home to the major Queen Alexandra Hospital and award-winning Rowans Hospice.
Southampton
Located on the South Coast, near the New Forest, Southampton is also a major port. The city is very green, devoting substantial areas to large, well kept parks. There are also a number of public areas where people can view the water and activity in the harbour. The city is served by the largest hospital in Hampshire, Southampton General Hospital, as well as Countess Mountbatten Hospice, which delivers compassionate palliative care.
Basingstoke
Basingstoke is an old market town in the North of Hampshire with great connections to London by rail, or by car on the M3. There is a popular and accessible National Trust destination, The Vyne, nearby, with a beautiful house and gardens. The town is home to Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital, which has an A&E department, as well as St Michael’s hospice that serves the local community and runs frequent events for the community to get involved in.
Winchester
Winchester lies at the Western end of the South Downs National Park, on the River Itchen and features the impressive, major landmark of Winchester Cathedral; one of the largest cathedrals in Europe.
Winchester has an ageing population, meaning there is a great community of elderly people who enjoying making the most of regular social events. Winchester Hospice contributes to this community with its excellent facilities, alongside the Royal Hampshire County Hospital, which has an emergency department.
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is the second most populous island in the UK. It is located 2-5 miles off of the South Coast, but is easily accessible by regular ferries from Lymington, Southampton and Portsmouth. The island has resorts that have been holiday destinations since Victorian times and is known for its mild climate, coastal scenery, and verdant landscape of fields, downland and chines. There is a buzzing elderly population, a major hospital and hospice.
Average Hampshire Care Home Fees
Hampshire county and the wider South East region is one of the most affluent parts of the country, so the average care cost here rises further than the national average of £37,237, or £51,700 including nursing care. The table below shows the average cost of a year’s care in the South East, depending on the type of care you require.
| Residential | Residential with Nursing Care | |
| Elderly | £41,868 | £58,192 |
| Dementia | £42,750 | £60,192 |
Estimates taken from a study by LaingBuisson from the Care of Older People UK Market Report 2018, adjusted for inflation
Elderly Life in Hampshire
Hampshire is an incredibly pleasant place to grow old, with its stunning coastline, beautiful countryside and buzzing cities. Its excellent, accessible railway links to London also mean that the county is well connected and easy for relatives who live in the capital to visit.
There is a good provision of care available through local councils and charities, with many schemes in place to support the elderly, many of which have started in Hampshire, proved successful and then been used elsewhere in the UK; such as Driving Miss Daisy and assistive technology. For these reasons, Hampshire is a more expensive place to grow old compared to the UK average.
Rating of Local NHS Trusts
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and social care in England. They monitor, inspect and regulate services to make sure they meet fundamental standards of quality and safety. You can view the performance ratings of Hampshire’s NHS Trusts through the respective links below:
