In our first blog, we looked at what a break does for a carer. Life satisfaction rising from 4.96 to 6.06. Three in four saying it helped prevent a crisis. Families reporting less strain at home.
This one is about what that's worth in pounds, because the case for rest shouldn't need a business case, but it helps to have one.
The headline figure
In 2024, Carefree delivered 6,345 breaks on an operating budget of £684,021. Just Economics, working to HM Treasury Green Book guidance, calculated the total social value created across carers, their families, community partners and the State.
£16.49 million.
That's a return of £24 for every £1 spent. Of that, £284 per break flows directly back to the public purse in avoided NHS and social care costs, £2.64 returned to the State for every £1 of our operating cost.
Where the value comes from
Most of it is the wellbeing gain itself. Treasury guidance values a one-point movement in life satisfaction at £13,000, and the improvement carers reported accounts for over £10 million of the total.
The rest is crisis avoided. When a caring arrangement breaks down, someone pays, usually a local authority, often the NHS. Emergency respite runs to around £2,146 for a week and a half. Residential care averages £5,636 a month, with a median stay of 1.5 years.
It gets cheaper as it grows
Most of our costs are fixed, the platform doesn't cost more to run when more carers use it. Between 2023 and 2024, breaks rose 42% while operating costs rose 5%.
The report projects that by 2029, at 35,000 breaks a year, the cost per break falls from £108 to £40, the return to the State rises to £7.11 for every £1, and the value of donated hotel rooms reaches £9.6m annually.
The constraint isn't money. It's rooms.
What this means
Two of the report's recommendations follow directly from these numbers. That HM Treasury explore incentives for hotels to donate rooms, given the £284 per break it saves the public purse. And that local authorities, ICBs and NHS Trusts fund the £38 admin fee carers currently pay themselves — an investment the model suggests returns £7.91 for every £1, in avoided emergency and residential care alone.
Rest is the cheapest intervention in social care. It just hasn't been treated that way.
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