NEWS RELEASE FROM THE
REGISTERED NURSING HOME ASSOCIATION
Issued 10th October 2001
'BRITAIN'S OLDER PEOPLE STILL AT THE BOTTOM
OF THE POLITICAL PECKING ORDER':
NURSING HOMES QUESTION GOVERNMENT'S SERIOUSNESS
IN TACKLING ELDERLY CARE CRISIS
'Too much inedible packaging and too little meat in the sandwich' is how the largest organisation representing Britain's nursing homes has responded to the Government's Building Capacity and Partnership in Care document (published yesterday) and the announcement of extra money for local authorities.
The Registered Nursing Home Association (RNHA), which represents 1,000 nursing homes throughout the country, says the Government's latest strategy for co-operation between the public and independent sectors has failed to guarantee the monumental changes that are necessary to save many hundreds of nursing homes from closure in the months ahead.
Whilst welcoming the Government's apparent recognition of the importance of the nursing home sector in meeting the nation's health care needs, the RNHA believes the strategy is too broad and too vague to make a real and lasting difference to the survival of many nursing homes across the country and to patients' ability to get the care they need when and where they need it.
Nor, the association warns, will the extra £300 million for local authorities over the next two years, which the Government announced yesterday, be sufficient or come through the system quickly enough to avert a deepening crisis in the nursing home sector.
The RNHA is asking whether this is genuinely 'new' money, or simply the first tranche of the resources already promised in the NHS Plan some sixteen months ago.
Whether the money is really above the planned level of expenditure or not, the association argues that the Government's belated gesture would have done a lot more good if it had come a lot earlier.
Commented RNHA chief executive officer Frank Ursell: "The Government will need to be much more radical and much quicker off the mark if it is to ensure that Britain's most vulnerable old people receive the level of care they deserve.
"As things are, we can expect more home closures, more bed losses, more disruption to elderly patients and more bed blocking in NHS hospitals. The Government is papering over the cracks but those cracks are getting deeper and wider all the time and nothing that has happened in the past twenty four hours is likely to change that."
He added: "The reality is that nursing homes care for tens of thousands more patients than NHS hospitals. We are, and have been for many years, the mainstay of care for older people with serious, long term health problems. Yet inaction at a national level has allowed nursing homes to be put under the financial cosh for so long that many of them have been forced to accept defeat.
"The fact is that you cannot provide high quality care for people for very dependent old people for an amount of money that would scarcely buy you bed and breakfast for the night in a cheap hotel. That is what nursing homes are expected to do for State-funded patients. Sadly, older people come at the bottom of the political pecking order. They get the crumbs from the table after everyone else has feasted."
The RNHA believes more homes in many parts of the country will go out of business while the fees paid for publicly supported patients remain at an average of around £48 a day. It is campaigning for a more realistic figure to be paid.
Said Mr Ursell: "How could anyone provide 24-hour nursing care, accommodation, food, linen, lighting, heating for that kind of money? Local authorities themselves couldn't and wouldn't do it. The NHS couldn't and wouldn't do it. So the attitude seems to be - let the independent and voluntary sectors do it and then blame them if they don't do it to the required standards. Nursing home care fees need to rise by at least £6 to £7 a day per patient if the current crisis is not to get worse."
The association is especially concerned about the future for nursing homes and older people in the majority of local authority areas which have not been designated as 'priority areas' for a slice of its £300 million package.
Commented Mr Ursell: "Priority appears to have been given to those areas where the Government perceives hospital bed blocking to be at its worst. But the situation on the ground is extremely volatile.
"Bed blocking at NHS hospitals is by no means the only indicator of problems in the nursing home sector. Whether or not the local hospitals are clogged up by patients whose discharges have been delayed, nursing homes are suffering because their costs are exceeding their income. It cannot go on or this country will have an elderly care crisis of unprecedented proportions - and the Government won't be able to claim they weren't warned."
END
Notes to editors:
1. The RNHA is the UK's leading representative organisation of the nursing home sector, with around a thousand nursing homes in membership throughout England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
2. The Department of Health has just published Building Capacity and Partnership in Care, an agreement between the statutory and independent social care, health care and housing sectors.
3. Yesterday, the Government announced that it would be giving local authorities in England an additional £300 million over two years for community care packages to help reduce bed blocking in NHS hospitals.
For further information and comment, please contact:
Frank Ursell, Chief Executive Officer, RNHA
(Tel: 0121-454 2511 or 07785 227000 mobile)
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