Exclusive
Hundreds of care homes in England close due to funding and staffing pressures
15 January 2024, 07:01 | Updated: 15 January 2024, 09:57
More than 14,000 elderly care beds were closed in England last year as financial and staffing pressures forced hundreds of homes to close.
Listen to this article
Loading audio...
Families across the UK have spoken to LBC about the distress and turmoil the closures have caused them – with some fearing their relatives wouldn't survive a move.
Meanwhile, a lack of adult residential spaces outside of hospitals continues to put pressure on the NHS, with more than 90% of hospital beds full on average and thousands of people who are fit to leave hospital being unable to do so.
Karen Rogers, from Plymouth, says her mother Marion Searle, who suffered with dementia, was moved to four different homes in under four years. The last time was because the home she was in, Colebrook Manor in Plympton, permanently closed.
Ms Rogers says her mother’s health deteriorated rapidly after the move, and she died in September last year, aged 78.
“She had moved twice before because those care homes said they could no longer meet her needs and I desperately wanted the third home to be the final place. But to have to move her again when all she needed was stability and familiarity was heartbreaking,” Ms Rogers said.
“The news the home was closing came as a big shock and we were only given a few weeks to find a new home.
“The whole process was just so stressful and awful.
“They need to do something about this because these are our elderly people, and we’re all going to be old one day and need care and not everyone has the money to pay for it.”
Read more: Shapps announces 20,000 British troops to boost NATO amid Ukraine war and Russian aggression
Helen Wildbore, director of Care Rights UK, says their helpline is being inundated by calls from those in care and their relatives who are having to deal with their homes being closed.
“It can be really distressing, stressful and traumatic for people nearing the end of their lives,” she said.
“A move from their home can have a serious detrimental effect on their health and can even hasten death for some people.”
Sarah Blagbrough is part of the Save our Kirklees Dementia Care Homes group campaigning to stop the closure of two council-run dementia care homes in West Yorkshire - Castle Grange in Newsome and Claremont House in Heckmondwike.
Kirklees Council says it is "committed to supporting people living with dementia", but is consulting on plans to shut their homes as part of its need to make £47m of savings.
In response, the campaign group has launched legal action against the local authority, and say it will cost more to close the homes than keep them open. Ms Blagbrough said: “I’m fearful for my mum but I also have sleepless nights for everyone else.
“What will happen to those people who deserve to live and end their lives in a lovely, secure home - because that’s what it is, it’s their home - not a care facility.
“By taking away these people’s home you are issuing them a death sentence”
According to figures from the Care Quality Commission (CQC), at the end of 2023 there were 518 fewer care homes in England than at the same time the previous year – a closure of 14, 169 beds. It comes after years of more care homes closing than are opening.
Most of the beds closed are believed by care organisations to be publicly-funded places.
The total net loss of beds is around 1,000, but experts say those that have been lost entirely have been replaced with self-funded beds that are not affordable for many needing care.
Care England, a charity representing care providers, says many of the homes closing are ones with a high proportion of local authority funded beds, meaning the crisis could hit hardest among people who can't afford to pay private fees.
CEO Martin Green says plugging the existing funding gap of £1.3bn would be a step in the right direction.
He said: “Underfunding is absolutely at the heart of this alongside the difficulty of getting staff and what we’re seeing now is all these issues coming to a fore and it’s starting to make the closure situation look very dire.
“What we need from the government is a really clear plan that should first be about prevention, then how you support people in their own homes and when they need residential care there needs to be an adequate supply of good quality care that is well resourced and well staffed.”
But for others, fixing staffing issues is just as important.
Unions want social workers’ pay, conditions and career development pathways to be brought in line with NHS staff.
Unison’s Gavin Edwards said: “There are 152,000 vacancies across England at the moment and there are problems with vacancies in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as well.
“A lot of care organisations are not able to continue services because they’re simply not able to recruit the staff and what’s driving that is a lack of adequate and fair pay and conditions.
“We’re calling for a National Care Service, meaning a national framework for the pay and conditions of care workers.
“This is an incredibly difficult job and there shouldn’t be a postcode lottery for the way social care workers are paid in the same way that we wouldn’t tolerate that for the NHS.”
Despite disagreement over how to fix the social care sector, most agree that it would solve many of the issues facing the NHS.
Last winter, 14,000 people in hospitals in England were fit for discharge but had nowhere to go in the community. And the same problems exist across the UK.
Darren Hughes, Head of the NHS Wales Confederation, said it was “incredibly difficult” to find someone a care home bed once they were ready to leave hospital.
“The ambulances we’re seeing waiting outside hospitals are the canary in the mine for the pressures.
“At any one time there are around 9,000 hospital beds in Wales and on average we’re seeing around 1,500 beds with patients in them who would be well enough to leave hospitals if they had the right care and support either in a care home or in their own homes.
“This is having a huge impact on the NHS’s ability to provide important and urgent care to people who really need it.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “The government has now made available up to £8.1 billion over this year and next to support adult social care and discharge.
“We are additionally investing up to £700 million on a major transformation of the adult social care system, which includes improving care workers’ skills and supporting career progression, investing in technology and digitisation, and adapting people’s homes to allow them to live independently.
“We have made a landmark shift in how we can hold local authorities to account for the care they provide. The new duty for the Care Quality Commission to assess how local authorities are delivering their Care Act duties has gone live, and we have also made progress on our plans to transform social care data.”
A Welsh Government spokesperson said: “In the last year nearly £145 million has been invested through the Welsh Government Regional Integration Fund on projects delivered by health and social care partners to provide care closer to home.
“Latest data shows spending on social care in Wales is 43% higher per head than in England. It is also higher than in Scotland or Northern Ireland.
“We recognise we must reshape services to ensure our health and social care system is fit for the future and our increasingly ageing population. Our longer-term strategic vision is for a national care service in Wales.
“We are also investing in more equipment, same-day emergency care and extra community beds as well as integrated solutions with social care services to help improve patient flow through hospitals and tackle ambulance handover delays."
