Displaying items by tag: residential care

One in three nursing homes still spend less than $10 a day per resident on food despite being given an extra $10 a day by the government to improve the standard of meals. A government audit of 2,600 residential aged-care facilities’ spending on food and ingredients for the last six months of 2021 shows average daily food spend per resident is about $12.35. 67% of residential services in the past six months reported an average daily spend on food and ingredients of more than $10 per day. The audit concluded that 2% of nursing homes are still spending an average of less than $6 per day. The aged care services minister said the sector’s performance ‘isn’t good enough’. All providers spending less than $10 per resident per day on food would be referred to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission to consider regulatory action.

A year ago Boris Johnson promised to tackle the social care crisis. Age UK director Caroline Abrahams said the PM must honour this pledge, or thousands of elderly people will continue to suffer needlessly and the social care sector will never recover from the hammer blow caused by the pandemic. A huge petition, signed by 110,000 people, was handed in, to put pressure on him to deliver on his promise to provide the decent level of care the elderly deserve. Also the UK Home Care Association, which represents those providing home help, said that unless he acts the vulnerable will continue to receive rationed, underfunded services that are started too late to prevent independence deteriorating. When Mr Johnson became Prime Minister, he said his job was to protect people from the fear of having to sell their home to pay for care costs.

Nurse academic Irene Tuffrey-Wijne says figures about deaths from coronavirus of people with learning disabilities are needed now to help prevent unnecessary deaths. Public Health England have stated that an expert group will analyse data on the deaths from coronavirus of those with learning disabilities and autism. However, the data will not be published until 2021. Ms Tuffrey-Wijne said, ‘It’s not good enough to look at this retrospectively in 2021; it will be too late then to prevent unnecessary deaths in 2020.’ The Care Quality Commission says there has been a 175% increase in deaths of people with learning disabilities living in adult social care organisations in England, compared with the same period last year. But while elderly people are entitled to be tested for coronavirus, people with a learning disability are not. See