The challenge of meeting local demand for care

Those who are interested in football, and in particular of watching Jeff Stelling on Sky Sports, may remember his (very articulate) live Saturday afternoon onscreen rant a couple of years ago during which he defended Middlesbrough, the city that had been placed at the top of the table as the worst place to live in England. In fact, Middlesbrough also tops another league table – that is in relation to the huge variance  in the provision of care home beds across the country.

In 2014, my report entitled ‘Wanted: 260,000 Care Home Beds’ described how the growth in the elderly population over the next 20 years would lead to this level of increased demand. The subsequent annual report ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’ concludes that, rather than adding beds, we have been losing them. A quarter of the way through that 20 year period, England has lost about 9000 beds rather than adding what equated to about 65,000. 

During that same period, the number of domiciliary care providers for older people grew by 28 per cent to about 8000 and the number of extra care services grew very slightly. However, it is not easy to measure how many people are actually being cared for by either of these sectors as they are not required to show this on the Care Quality Commission (CQC) register.