Concern at bill for county care

The news has come at a time when the county council is considering reducing the number of long-term placements in its residential homes because of budget pressures facing adults' services.

The situation has been attributed to the fact that people today are encouraged to stay in their own homes longer and when they do go into residential homes they are more likely to need nursing care in the near future.

Cllr George Blampied told the adults' services select committee that the council had built a number of brand-new homes from scratch.

The homes are owned by the county council and run for it under contract by Shaw Healthcare.

He said: "We put them up as care homes, but we now have the necessity for a lot more nursing beds.

"Now we are possibly being stopped from doing this through fire regulations.

"What will it cost us to change care homes to the requirement for nursing beds?

"Why when we built these homes didn't we think about this in the first place, and build into the homes the possibility that nursing might go in?" he asked.

The committee was told that no figure to the cost of converting brand-new care hokmes to nursing facilities could be given at the present time.

Committee chairman Cllr Irene Richards said that when Shaw was commissioned the county council knew that the road it would be going down as care provider was to try tokeep people in their own homes longer.

She said: "The longer you stay in your own home, the more care you are going to need when you go to a residential settlement.

"We should really have thought about this."

Amanda Rogers, director of operations (adults) said new fire regulations had not been brought in until after thehomes were built.

She said: "The regulations changed for the requirement on nursing homes later on. This could not easily have been easily anticipated," she said.

Finance director Richard Hornby said the extra cost involved in necessary fire precautions would probably have to be a capital item and would be a substitution for something else in the county council's capital programme.

He doubted if the county council would have enough to pay from revenue.

Measures being taken to address budget pressures facing adults'services were outlined at the meeting and these included reducing the number of long-term residential placements.

Ms Rogers stressed this was not about ejecting people from residential homes where they were happy and settled.

It was about supporting people and it was critically important to crack-on with the county's 'regaining independence' project, designed tom reduce the need for long-term care by providing targeted intensive support when customers needed it most.

"We have to make sure we are only putting people into residential placements for whom it is absolutely the right thing," she added.