CARE homes have got a bad press. When the subject comes up, there’s a common response:
“I’m not putting my mum or dad in any home.”
The scandals of a small minority of homes have unfairly given the impression that the majority are of questionable quality. It overlays another commonly-held image, of older people sitting in their lounge rows, with little going on outside of mealtimes and bedtime.
Nevertheless, the demand for care home places continues to grow. The number of older people in care homes with nursing increased from 2006-13 by 22 per cent. Here in Nottinghamshire, we can expect our “oldest of the old” – people over 85 – to double in number over the next 16 years.
Where are “they” going to be living? Many of us will happily be staying at home, but what of those who will need 24-hour care? Care homes will remain an important and growing part of the range of care options. They need a better press.
National Care Home Open Day in June was a good start. A quarter of Nottinghamshire’s 293 care homes opened their doors to the public. I visited one in Arnold where “activity care staff” described how the home welcomed neighbourly contact with residents and emphasised helping residents having a life outside the home.
Care homes could go further in encouraging every day to be, in a sense, an open day. Friends, relatives and neighbours should feel able to drop in, an approach that many homes already have.
This should not be a charter for anyone to invade residents’ privacy but opening the doors of care homes helps residents feel part of their neighbourhood.
The second way of reassuring the public is for there to be a concerted effort to improve the weaker care homes. These homes – perhaps nationally up to 18 per cent of the total – are known to the Care Quality Commission which inspects them.
These proprietors and managers need to be helped to change their ways of providing care. If they cannot, they should be eased out of the sector – but with the residents being able to stay where they are wherever possible.
Joe Blogs 
I absolutely agree with Joe Pidgeon’s comments on care homes, particularly about the way they are perceived generally by the public.
How about Healthwatch devoting a couple of days looking at some of the known good homes and collecting data of all the great things they see that could be shared with all care homes in Nottinghamshire. The findings could be given to all HWN’s data base too.That might go someway to changing how many people perceive care homes to be. These comments shared would be part of a learning curve for the homes that find it difficult to reach the desired standard
I really like the idea in Jane’s reply of Healthwatch Nottinghamshire identifying “what good looks like” in residential care homes locally. Healthwatch volunteers are now preparing to do “Enter and View” work and, as part of this, they are beginning to work alongside Nottinghamshire adult social services quality assurance staff in their visits to residential homes. I have suggested to Deb Morton, our Volunteer Co-ordinator, that this idea of identifying what good looks like is incorporated in their work. Thanks for the suggestion.