Care Crisis

The need for more care homes is steadily increasing so why are so many care homes being closed down? Most recently the plight of 106 year old Louise Watts, a resident of Underhill House in Wolverhampton has been forefront in the media. The Government wanted to move Louise and 5 other residents into alternate care homes because it would not pay the £2 Million needed to bring the 40 year old care home up to current standards.

Health Secretary Andy Burnham stated that the current system put in place to care the frail and venerable elderly “cannot cope” and went on to discuss how this system is going to be revolutionised in the future. Their vision is a National Care Service which is fair, simple and affordable to replace the much debated ‘means test’ system we currently have in place which has been accused of being an over-burdened system with insufficient funding and inequalities

This ‘Care Crisis’ is worsening because more people need care as they are living longer – in 1948 life expectancy was 66, today it is 78 and there are more people over the age of 65 than there are under 18. The current demands for care homes and care is proposed to increase by about 30% over the next 20 years

There are currently just over 24’000 care homes in the UK, I found this on www.comparecarehomes.com which has the most up to date list of UK care homes. Lets home this number increases and not decreases in the coming years to help cope with this growing population of people requiring long term care.