The Daily Telegraph carries a wise and well-informed article about the current crisis in the care home industry by Lady Bakewell. About the current crisis sparked off by the near bankruptcy of the care group Southern Cross, she has this to say:
But this is only a symptom of what is wrong with the entire care system in this country. The whole sector is operating at too low a level. Money is scarce on all fronts, and what little money there is is being cut. The state is obliged, under the 1948 National Assistance Act, to care for the old, but this has always been on a mean-tested basis. Now that local authorities are being squeezed, the availability of care packages which once went to those with “moderate” needs is being restricted to those with “critical” needs. Private care homes have their own budget-related problem. Given similar spending concerns, they often pay low wages and have a high turnover of poorly trained carers. Many of the homes are dependent on immigrants to provide this labour and the Government’s projected targets for reducing visas will bear heavily on services which rely on such workers.
