residential care

I really am worried about the implications of this perfect storm of reducing budgets and increasing costs in terms of the likely availability of rural places for vulnerable elderly people going forward. This story tells us:

Almost one in 10 beds in Britain’s care homes will disappear in the next five years because of the financial crisis facing the sector, leaving the NHS to pick up a £3bn bill, a damning new report predicts.

As many as 37,000 beds, the equivalent of about 1,500 care homes, could be lost by 2020, according to the thinktank ResPublica.

Elderly residents would have to stay in hospitals instead, the report says, where they would take up one in four beds.

The findings underline the scale of the problems facing the care home sector and the potential cost to the NHS. Leading operators have already said they will close or sell homes if the chancellor fails to provide more funding in his autumn statement.

Care homes are being squeezed by a fall in the fees that local authorities contribute to residents’ care and a rise in staff costs. The latter will increase further when the “national living wage” comes into force next April.

The ResPublica report, which is backed by the GMB trade union, says the care home industry will have a shortfall in funding of £1.1bn by the 2020/21 financial year, with £382m linked to the costs associated with the introduction of the national living wage.

It says the industry can no longer cope with the failure of a major operator, as it did in 2011 when Southern Cross, the country’s biggest care home group, collapsed and rival operators took control of its homes.