There’s more time than it feels like.
How care is arranged and paid for in Wales, what your loved one is entitled to, and what happens next. Free and impartial, whichever home you choose.
Start here, whichever home you choose.
Three things settle most of it: an assessment of their needs, a choice of home, and who pays. Each has a page below, and the answers hold for any home in Wales.
If your loved one is in hospital now, start with Your Rights. If the question is money, start with Funding. For free advice on any of it, ring 01633 857 715 or email [email protected].
If the hardest part is the promise you made, Family Guilt is the page for that.
Your rights, on one page.
Care in Wales runs under the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014. The assessment, a choice of home, and their best interests if they cannot decide are the parts that matter most when a care home is being discussed.
The full list of seven, from that first assessment to getting it in writing: Your Rights.
One number to remember.
If Aria costs more than the council’s usual rate, the difference can be paid as a top-up — a choice, never a condition. Both, and what happens if the money runs out: Funding. If it’s in their house, or their needs are mainly health needs: Our Fees.
Here’s where it goes.
Most of it goes to the people in the room with them: the best-paid carers in the country, and no agency staff. What is listed as an extra, the yearly review, and the 2026 freeze: Our Fees.
The questions families ask most.
Twelve things families tell us first, and what we say back. Eleven questions worth asking any home, with our answers, are on FAQ.
I’m worried they won’t settle.
Most families are, and most people do. The first days are about faces: the same carer at breakfast, the same voice at bedtime, every day, until the place feels familiar. Some people settle in a day, some take a few weeks, and the team has been through every version of it.
Their room helps. Their own furniture, their pictures, their own bedding or curtains if they like. A room that looks like theirs is an easier room to wake up in.
They keep asking to go home.
Almost everyone does, and for some it goes on for a long time. “Home” is often somewhere from long ago, a childhood house or a first flat, rather than the house they left. So the answer is not a door; it is company. A cup of tea, a walk along the corridor, a voice they know. Over time, the same faces every day are what make this place feel like theirs.
I’m frightened of them falling.
So is every family who comes here, and it is the right thing to watch. If someone falls they are checked and treated, and you are rung by the person who was with them. Then the cause is looked at.
Most of the work is done before a fall. A carer who has known someone for years notices a change in how they walk before anyone else can, which is why falls here have more than halved since 2020. In the bedrooms, a sensor notices someone is up and lets a carer know. In the lounge and corridors, cameras do the same job, so someone reaches them before a stumble becomes a fall.
What if they’re ill and I’m not there?
You are rung straight away, and where possible someone your loved one knows goes with them. Their room stays theirs. When they come back the faces are the same, and that is usually what they notice.
What if they get worse?
Their care changes with them. When something changes, the plan is looked at again with you and their GP, and the people carrying it out are the ones who already know them. Their room stays theirs.
If a day ever comes when they need more than a residential home can give, you hear it from us early, and the next step is worked out together, with time.
How will I know if something goes wrong?
You hear it first, from the home, the same day, with what is being done about it. Where the law asks us to, we tell Care Inspectorate Wales too.
The money won’t last forever.
It does not have to. When savings approach £50,000, the council is told in good time and its contribution starts. Everything below that line is left alone.
A council has a duty to every person who needs care, and a change in who pays is not a reason to change where someone lives. We have walked families through this before, and we walk you through it: what to ask, in what order, and what the law says. The detail is on Funding.
The council says it won’t pay for Aria.
Then the council must show it has somewhere else that suits their needs, at its usual rate, with a room free. Where it cannot, it pays the difference itself. A council cannot move someone on cost alone.
We set out the questions to ask, and the order to ask them in, before anything is decided. The full list is on Your Rights.
What if it isn’t right and they leave?
Then they leave, and nothing is owed. There is no notice period. A room is closed the day a resident moves on, and never charged for afterwards.
They don’t want to go, or can’t take it in.
Both are common. If they can make the decision, it is theirs, and an afternoon here with nothing decided often does more than any conversation. If they cannot, the law asks for the decision to be made in their best interests with the family’s voice at the centre, and the move is planned gently, in stages if that helps.
I promised I’d never put them in a home.
Most families did. You have not put them in a home; you have found them one, and brought in people who can do the nights and the lifting. That is how the promise gets kept.
Guilt is the most common thing families tell us in the first week, and it comes from caring, not from failing. What comes after it is afternoons together, the same old stories, being family again instead of their carer. There is a page on it: Family Guilt.
I can’t visit as often as I’d like.
Come when you can. You have your own family, your own work, your own life. You can always ring, or video call, between visits. Whether you come once a month, once a week or once a day, it will make their day.