If the government is confident that adult social is fine, and can be looked at again by the next government – this is what they will be faced with in 2020.
Adult social care was ignored in the Autumn Statement, with the belief (as stated by Theresa May answering Jeremy Corbyn during PM Question Time prior to the Statement) that the Better Care Fund and the 2% precept is managing the situation, and that the next government can deal with it.
Well just look what the next government will be left with!
In 2015 it was calculated that the average occupancy across all care homes in England was around 90%. During that year, there was a net loss of around 3,000 (0.75%) beds due to closures, rather than an extra 9,000 beds which should have been added to cope with the relevant elderly population growth that year.
If this continues year on year for the rest of this government:
There will not be any spare beds by the end of 2017 early 2018.
By 2020 there will be 30,000 plus people looking for a care home bed that does not exist. And that is in England alone.
And as four out of every five care home beds are occupied by people with dementia, 24,000 of them will be living with this condition.
Ok so my headline of them being homeless will obviously not be the case. They will be stuck in NHS hospitals until new homes can be built.
The Chancellor and the PM cannot ignore the Global knowledge that social care in the UK is in crisis, and that the Government is in no mood currently to sort it out, despite so much informed pleading, and statistical evidence from respectable people within the sector.
How is this going to incentivise the massive external investment that we need simply to provide enough beds?
Around 390,000 care home beds are currently registered with the CQC in England. This needs to grow by around 60,000 by 2020 to maintain the current ratios ( offering providers an average 90% occupancy and therefore giving families some form of choice, or “person centred care” as was the central driving force of the 2014 Care Act)
This equates to 1,280 new care homes (320 a year) based on the average size of new care homes opened in 2015. And on top of this, they cannot be built just where the developers want them i.e. the South East. However much money is ploughed into The Better Care Fund, there is no mention about building new care homes in its Better Care Fund Planning Better Care Fund Planning Requirements for 2016-17
And on top of this, the new homes cannot be built just where the developers want them, for example in the South East where self-funders are more prevalent. Where and when new homes owned by private companies have been built have been down to the owners, but this has led to a massive variance in supply levels across the country.
Some areas have too many homes, and too many beds, meaning many are managing on low occupancy levels, and struggling to survive in an already tight financial situation. Other areas are under supplied, so much that Local Authorities will find it hard to place vulnerable in the right care home, local enough for their families to visit.
There have been so many representations by respected people heading up all the main associations and organisations within the social care sector, who have all given good evidence as to the dire situation within this social care, and how much the government needs to take another look at a missed opportunity the Autumn Statement had to alleviate an immediate problem, rather than longer term planning.
Perhaps it is because they thought that many of the elderly people affected by an under-funded social care system, will not be able to vote, or be around to vote at the next election?
The data used in the above forecast is taken from CSI's own market intelligence model, called The CHAMP (Care Home Analysis of Market Potential). For more information click here
