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 [...]

The Care Quality Commission has released a new document ‘working together to prevent and control infections’ which aims to prevent the cross spread of infection between hospitals and care homes.  The report suggests that improvements are needed through the chain of responsabilities between hospital and home, including better discharge information, inclusion of ambulance crews and [...]

New research from Laing & Buisson consultancy indicates a turning point has been reached after a 15 year decline in demand for care home places.  Demand is expected to increase dramaticaly in coming years, at a time when the public sector finances are under pressure and cuts are likely across social care. The proportion of [...]

A lawyer who worked to prevent the closure of local authority care homes has been cleared of bringing her proffession into disrepute.  Yvonne Cossack challenged home closures on the grounds that this would cause unreasonable distress to residents, claiming that in many cases this would have lead to early deaths. She was accused of breaching [...]

The Department of Health is consulting on new guidance which required change due to provisions of the Health and Social Care act and setting up of the Care Quality Commission. The proposed changes impact care homes by changing the criteria that will be used by CQC to assess the ‘cleanliness and infection control’ through the [...]

The question of when the NHS should pay for Nursing home costs has been further clarified in a groundbreaking case.  Long term care in Nursing Homes will increasingly be paid for by the NHS after a recent case in Wirral.  It is estimated that around 100k people are currently paying for care that should be [...]

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 [...]

CQC is working toward a news set of registration standards that will apply to all regulated health and adult social care providers from 2010. There is one week left on this vital consultation

The Department of Health website has an excellent section about swine flu, including weekly updates.  This provides news on policy changes as the epidemic progresses.   The latest update (13th August) includes advice on which groups are a priority for the vaccines, which covers almost 11 million people.  This does not include healthy over 65’s who [...]

The Metropolitan police report that a care home nurse is the first to have been sentenced under the Mental Capacity Act.  The nurse was found guilty of taking a photograph of a partialy closed 92 year old woman, in contravention of section 44 of the 2005 act.

In the first of a series of links to key websites of interest to the care home sector, comes this UK government website.  The site provides the public facing / general audience focus for the consultation on the Green paper ‘Shaping the Future of Care Together’ and includes a video setting out the key issues.

The Panorama journalist, Arifa Farooq who conducted an undercover investigation of the care home system aired earlier this year is reported to have been arrested.

The carehome company, Four Seasons Healthcare is reported to be close to an agreement with key investors to halve it’s £1.5bn of debt.  The group got into difficulties over it’s property backed financing, which turned sour as property prices fell.

The new points based system for awarding work visas was raised by the National Care Association in evidence to the Home Affairs committee, in response to their report ‘Managing Migration’. The NCA believes that certain overseas nursing qualifications have not been adequately recognised under the system, though this is now being addressed.

With the poor state of public finances, politicians are having to decide whether to stand by previous commitments or bin them.  Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrats Treasurey Spokesman has announced they are abandoning the previous pledge to provide free care for the elderly.

The guardian reports that staff at a secure young persons care home (Orchard Lodge, Annerly in London) are occupying the entire site after being made redundant.  The 45 employees were reported to having been dismissed and asked to leave the building in 2 hours. They are preventing security staff from shuttering the building.  The home [...]

Oxfam has published a report assessing the effectiveness of the ‘Gangmasters Licensing Authority’, the body set up in 2004 after the death of 23 Chinese cockle pickers in Morcame.  The report looks at other areas of exploitative employment practices and makes particular comment on the care sector, which often employs staff from overseas on low [...]

A new report from the Work and Pensions Select Committe has called for an increase to the expenses allowance (PEA) that are recieved by care home residents. The increase, to £40 / week (from £21.90) would apply to elderly residents with less than £23k in savings. According to Age Concern, ministers previously reneged on a [...]