Care Homes need investment and reinvention not rebuke…
The UK’s care homes have been thrust into the spotlight in recent months due to the number of deaths related to coronavirus. This number sadly exceeds 20,000 in England and Wales already.
The situation is not unique to the UK. In Sweden care home resident deaths account for nearly half of the fatalities linked to Covid-19. In the US, it’s a quarter. The Netherlands does not fare much better. I could go on.
There is much finger-pointing in the UK. Government failings; PPE supplies sent to care homes being sub-standard; care providers were sent conflicting guidance throughout this outbreak; healthcare authorities discouraged care homes from sending residents into hospital; staff spreading the virus between homes as they worked in several locations. I could go on.
Somewhere in all of this lies the various truths and a post-mortem should occur, not for the reason of apportioning blame but to give a leg up to a critical sector that is wounded and that needs to reinvent itself to restore public confidence.
The reality is that the sector in the UK was already in need of an intervention. This is a sector that was receiving unwanted scrutiny prior to the onset of covid-19 due to cases of bullying and other mistreatment of residents by staff workers. The industry had reputational damage. Covid-19 has just exposed to the fullest extent the shortcomings of the sector.
Over 80% of care home beds are provided by private companies. There is a reason for this. It’s a lucrative business that has created serious wealth for its private owners.
The care home sector is extremely attractive and will continue to grow not just domestically but globally. This is driven by aging populations in mature countries and an emerging trend in developing nations where the traditional extended family model of caring for the elderly is being challenged by western influence and affluence of the burgeoning middle classes.
Despite the attractiveness of the sector, it urgently needs reform. The reputational damage combined with increased costs is pushing the sector into financial hardship. Indeed, the latest research by the UK Homecare Association highlights that expenditure has increased by about 40% in some instances due to the cost of extra PPE, cleaning and staff to cover the Covid-19 situation. This is on top of the rising food and property costs that sector has experienced in the past few years.
Private firms dominate the sector that are backed mostly by debt; looking to shed costs – usually on the capability side – creating gaps in skills, equipment and training, putting profits before people and allowed to do so as the oversight and governance seems limited. We can add to this that in the past few years the UK Government has cut funding to councils for social care. These are the challenges that need to be addressed by reform.
Care homes need help, re-investment of profits and reform of the governance. Conduct the reviews, deep-dives, root cause analysis – go for your lives I say, but it’s part of the re-invention process to ensure that trust, confidence and investment is re-ignited in these critical establishments.