Care Home News

The Social Care Institute for excellence is running a grants programme to improve information technology infrastructure of care homes.  A total of £12m is available to install hardware and software, and 359 applications have been made in just two days.   Proposals should show how the IT solution will benefit residents.

“Ratings for providers have ..  improved, however one in six providers are only “poor” or “adequate”. Says CQC.  A major new report from the Care Quality Commission provides a detailed breakdown of adult social care services in England, including figures on usage of services broken down by quality ratings.

In todays Queens Speech, Gordon Brown is to promise further extension of free social care to the elderly.  The care package would cover both domicilliary as well as care home based support and apply to the most need.  The proposals would be funded by local and health authorities and are currently costed at £700m.

“Peggy is struggling to find a care home for her husband, Jack as he faces the tragic mental decline of Dementia, on the Radio 4 show ‘The Archers’.  The sensitive handling of the story line has been widely praised, but the show has only touched on the difficulty of actually finding a good care home.  [...]

The two largest parties have spent the week courting voters with promises to relieve the financial burden of paying for care by middle income voters.  We take a quick run through their proposals.

Channel 4 News reports that at DoH study has found frequent mistakes in the handling of medication at care homes, with as many as half of all residents affected.  The study ran for over two years and involved direct observation of medication administration within 55 care homes.

Through it’s support of the My Home Life initiative, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have carried out a piece of work to set out best practice in the running of care homes. With the help of sixty expert advisor’s and taking evidence from residents, they have produced a report setting out the Eight pillars of best [...]

Yet another care home closure hits the headlines. This time it is Underhill House in Wolverhamton. The council says that updating the home would cost £20m and it is better to move existing residents out. A matter of considerable distress for a small number of older people is a public relations nightmare for [...]

Care Home News will generally stick to news articles and social policy impacting on care homes in the UK, but this excellent article deserves wider attention.  The guardian journalist paints an insightful if poignant picture of life in a care home, without the sensationalism or demand for a ‘story’ that the media so often needs to [...]