Care Home Chains Face New Inspections

England’s first chief inspector of social care has said that the UK’s big care home chains are to face a tough new regime of corporate inspections to prevent financial problems from leading to poor or dangerous care for elderly residents. Under the plans, if a single care home run by a larger group is found to be inadequately caring for residents, it could trigger an urgent, wider look at other care homes run by the company.

Andrea Sutcliffe said she also wanted to improve the Care Quality Commission’s scrutiny of corporate leadership provided by care home chains to ensure standards were maintained and enforced. Ms Sutcliffe is overseeing the launch of an new system to regulate England’s 10,000 care homes which for the first time will have each institution rated as either outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate. Those rated as inadequate will be put into special measures and possibly shut down unless an immediate improvement is made.

So far, trial inspections have revealed 30% of homes require improvement while 5% are judged inadequate.