Today we received a distressed call from an elderly friend after they had read an article in The Daily Mail last week titled ‘Police probe at crisis care home: Three elderly residents are found with unexplained injuries as watchdog keeps families in dark over appalling treatment'. This left her feeling very vulnerable and frightened about her future prospect of going into residential care. This is very worrying; in the current climate it seems that a number of homes are not reaching the required level of care to continue trading or comply with required standards. We have seen a number of homes close down because of inappropriate service being delivered to their clients. From our experience this might be due to financial difficulties, exacerbated by inadequate social funding for placements; therefore running the home on a shoestring budget. Unfortunately, in other instances this is due to maximising profits to the detriment of the residents. Many care home providers lack care experience and buy residential and nursing homes as an investment to make money. We feel this is an urgent matter that needs to be immediately addressed.
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