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Fear grips old as care home closures rise
By: Ben Summerskill
The Guardian, March 25, 2001
Rise in property prices and lack of funding create crisis for ageing population.
Thousands of elderly people in need of residential care are finding it harder to find places as 18 residential homes a week close across Britain. New research confirms that more than 15,000 beds were lost last year, at a time when the population of people over 75 is rising faster than ever.
The crisis is acute in the most affluent areas, where booming property prices put pressure on care home owners to sell up. Most homes closed over the past year are being converted to residential occupation.
'It isn't just under-investment in social care services across the board causing this,' says Annie Stevenson of Help the Aged. 'Chronic staff shortages, especially in areas of full employment, are emerging as providers can't or won't pay more than the minimum wage.' Experts say the sudden removal of elderly people from their homes can cause illness, disorientation and even early death.
This week Ludshott Manor, a residential home near Haslemere in Surrey, will close. Rosemary Hurtley, an occupational therapist, was given four weeks' notice to rehouse her 89-year-old mother, a former art restorer who suffers from Alzheimer's disease.
'I haven't been able to tell my mother she's moving because she would become very anxious indeed,' says Hurtley. 'Ludshott has been fantastic. The whole culture has not been one of nursing or care, but of normal life as far as possible. In two years, my mother has improved socially and progressed enormously.'
A number of pets belonging to residents will be put down. Hurtley's mother will also be separated from a companion, a retired Army officer, with whom she has developed a close relationship. The home has been sold to a property developer who wants to convert it to luxury flats. Four other local homes face closure within six months.
David Wynn, proprietor of Ludshott Manor since 1982, said: 'I've simply had no choice but to close. I haven't been able to make a profit at the rates that local authorities are prepared to pay for care for residents.'
Help the Aged says 18 per cent of councils pay less to homes for accommodation than the rates recommended by the Government. The average payment is £250 a week for residential homes, or £350 a week for homes where nursing care is also offered.
'Moving into a care home in the first place is traumatic,' said Stevenson. 'To be evicted with no say in the matter, when they require stability and continuity of care, can be devastating.'
Home owners say it is not only a shortage of public cash that is causing closures. New minimum standards, including larger rooms and single occupancy from 2005, have been introduced. But no extra funding has been promised.
Researchers warn that the chronic shortage of places in residential homes means more elderly people 'bed-blocking' hospitals, as they occupy beds needed by other patients.
Paul Burstow MP, Liberal Democrat spokesman on older people, said: 'Why should people work in a care home if they earn less there than in a supermarket? These businesses simply aren't sustainable because of inadequate levels of state funding.'
Almost 40,000 of the 570,000 beds in Britain's care homes have been lost over the past five years. At the same time the number of people over 75, 3.7 million in 1996, is expected to rise by nearly 20 per cent over the next decade.
Successive governments have failed to acknowledge the dramatic impact on older people of sudden home closures.Yet, former Health Secretary Frank Dobson admitted in 1997 that 10 per cent die after an enforced change in their residential status.
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