Help With Choosing a Care Home in Hertfordshire

Help With Choosing a Care Home in Hertfordshire

hertforshire homesWhen looking for the perfect care home to suit your relatives needs, it is important to choose an area of Hertfordshire that will be best suited to them.

There can be many factors to consider to work out which location would be best, including what shop and amenities are available, whether it’s more urban or rural and the distance from relatives. Age Space has laid out the following guide to offer and insight into the areas of Hertfordshire and offer suggestions for you to consider.

If you are looking for more advice on what to look for from an individual care home, you may be interested in Age Space’s Top Tips for Choosing a Care Home, which includes a checklist on what you should be looking out for.

Find Hertfordshire Care Homes

Age Space is currently working on our very own directory of care homes in Hertfordshire. Until then, you and your relatives can use the CareHome.co.uk website to search for Hertfordshire care homes. On this site, you can filter the care homes according to your preferred locations, as well as other factors relevant to your relative.

Different Areas to Consider in Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire is a popular place for older people to live and there are plenty of areas which may particularly appeal to your relative. We have listed some of Hertfordshire’s best areas that you may want to consider below.

Bishop's Stortford

Bishop’s Stortford is a historic market town in East Hertfordshire – an area of the country that was voted the best place to live in the UK by the Halifax Quality of Life survey 2020. Factors leading to this award included high life expectancy, good health and impressive happiness scores.

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Letchworth Garden City

Letchworth Garden City - Areas of Hertfordshire

Letchworth prides itself on being the worldโ€™s first ‘Garden City’, created as a solution to the squalor and poverty of urban life in Britain in the late 19th Century. It is conveniently located and also the location of one of Hertfordshire’s impressive retirement villages.

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Royston

Royston is a town in North Hertfordshire, close to the border of Cambridgeshire. It has great travel links to the rest of Hertfordshire, to London, and to the north, making it easy for family to come and visit. Royston also has a wide choice of day clubs for older people that might be of interest to your relative, as well as a popular annual arts festival!

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St. Albans

St. Albans - Areas of Hertfordshire

St. Albans is Hertfordshire’s most famousย cathedral city,ย with a long and interesting history dating back to Celtic and Roman times, including being the first major town on the oldย Romanย road! With its rich history and its packed programme of theatre, opera and museum exhibitions, St. Albans may appeal to the culturally-minded older person. It is also only a short journey from London.

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Berkhamsted

Berkhamstedย is another of Hertfordshire’s historic market towns. It boasts Britain’s “most beautiful” and “best” cinema – the Rex – according to multiple national newspapers. Being in the area of Dacorum, older residents living in care homes in Berkhamsted can also benefit from the helpful services provided by the dedicated Age UK Dacorum group.

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Average Hertfordshire Care Home Fees

How much you can expect to pay for a care home per year depends on whether or not the older person in question requires residential care only, or residential with nursing care. In the UK this is usually around ยฃ37,237 per year (residential) and ยฃ51,700 (nursing).

As you can see from the table below, care homes in Hertfordshire are averagely more expensive than other parts of the UK. This is due to both its popularity as a retirement location and its proximity to London. However, this doesnโ€™t mean that you can expect to pay the prices below as care home fees are dependent on a lot of things, such as location, facilities, space, type of care, length of care, staff per resident and preference.

ย Residential OnlyResidential with Nursing Care
Yearly Cost of Care Homeยฃ59,420 per yearยฃ70,732 per year
Estimates taken from a study by LaingBuisson from the Care of Older People UK Market Report 2018, adjusted for inflation

The Benefits & Drawbacks of Life in Hertfordshire

Berkhamsted - Pros and Cons of Areas in Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire is lucky enough to have large expanses of green space, countryside and parks all over the county. From the Roman Mosaics of St Albans’ Verulamium Park to Aldenham County Park in Borehamwood, or the Green Flag-awarded Southern Country Park in Bishop’s Storford, there are large and historically interesting outdoor spaces throughout Hertfordshire.

As a popular commuter base, Hertfordshire has very good transport links to London and to the other home counties.

Hertfordshire has a large number of ‘Good’ care homes according to the CQC ratings. As mentioned earlier, one downside to care homes in Hertfordshire is that they can often cost more than the national average.

The official CQC ratings of the 4 local NHS Trusts in Hertfordshire vary. The Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust is rated as outstanding and the Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust is rated as good. The East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust and the West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust, however, were both recently rated as requiring improvement.

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