Category Archives: DOH

“Too big to fail”? Care home closures and the price of market failure

July 17, 2013   Carers, DOH, Older care

By the Centre for Health and the Public Interest, 15th July 2013

The real human costs of market failure and care home closure for the residents and their families

As the Competition Commission points out in the guidance which it is uses when conducting a market investigation, truly effective markets are characterised by ‘uncertainty, turbulence and change’.

And nowhere has market turbulence been more keenly felt than in the care home sector for older people, which has been subject to the vicissitudes of the market for the past 20 years.  Most recently, the care home chain Southern Cross went into administration as a result of an unsustainable debt financing model.  As the care homes owned by Southern Cross were looking after 31, 000 people, the government was faced with the prospect that nearly 9% of all the available care beds in England would disappear in one fell swoop.

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Nationwide care threshold 'will exclude hundreds of thousands in need'

July 1, 2013   Carers, disability, DOH, Older care, Social care

Charities warn plans to introduce threshold at ‘substantial needs’ would “perpetuate unfair system”, but ministers point to improved support for people without eligible needs.

Mithran Samuel
Friday 28 June 2013 14:11

Councils would be obliged to provide care for people with ‘substantial’ eligible needs and carers who meet a defined threshold, under government plans issued today.

The proposals would end the ability of local authorities to set their own threshold – unless it were more generous than the national minimum – and would create a new eligibility framework for social workers carrying out assessments to operate.

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NHS ‘ring fence’ threatened by plan to help social care

April 26, 2013   Carers, DOH, hospital, Social care, ukcuts

More than £1bn likely to be transferred from health budget to local authorities

Oliver Wright Author Biography

Friday 26 April 2013

Ministers are to effectively abandon their pledge to ring-fence NHS spending by diverting more than £1bn to cover the spiralling cost of social care, The Independent can disclose.

The Government has decided to act amid fears that hospitals are admitting elderly patients who could be better cared for at home.

The plans – being drawn up as part of the Government’s spending review – are likely to see at least £1bn transferred from the Department of Health to local authorities to keep people out of hospital.

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