Care news

• Leading UK provider of respite holidays for severely disabled people to close

  11-10-2024 08:00
  
  Revitalise says challenges ‘insurmountable’ due to local authority cuts, higher running costs and fall in donationsBritain’s only specialist respite holiday provider for severely disabled people and their carers is to close because of financial difficulties, in what has been called a bellwether example of the UK’s growing social care crisis.Revitalise, a charity that runs unique state-of-the-art respite stays, offering 24-hour care at two specially adapted hotels, said lo
  
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• Rachel Reeves has left the social care sector in deep trouble | Letters

  31-10-2024 19:05
  
  Rachael Dodgson of Dimensions says the budget adds to the pressure not-for-profit social care providers already face. Richard Robinson and Andrea Nicholas-Jones of Hourglass call on the chancellor to think againThe budget is alarming for not-for-profit social care providers because it will put us under pressure to meet the increases in tax costs across our workforce. Our initial analysis indicates that the changes to national insurance will cost us £5m next year. In addition to this, the i
  
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• UK politics: Starmer insists pro-growth policies on way after OBR’s budget warnings – as it happened

  31-10-2024 18:34
  
  PM says budget just ‘first step’ after watchdog said measures would make no difference to growth over five yearsRachel Reeves is now being interview on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.She is being interviewed by Ed Balls, the former Labour shadow chancellor who is now a TV presenter. He asks her to confirm that workers will end up losing out because of the employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs) increase. Continue reading...
  
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• Housing, social care and universities: who lost out in the UK budget?

  31-10-2024 16:33
  
  Rachel Reeves made funding the NHS a priority, but people working in other areas said they were disappointedRachel Reeves’s first budget emphasised raising taxes to help the NHS, as the health service tries to cope with huge waiting lists and an ageing population. Funding the NHS was a top priority, but people in other sectors – from universities to social care – feel the budget was a missed opportunity to deal with impending crises or bring in desperately needed reforms in the
  
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• Starmer insists pro-growth policies on way after OBR’s budget warnings – UK politics live

  31-10-2024 16:15
  PM says budget just ‘first step’ after watchdog said measures would make no difference to growth over five yearsRachel Reeves is now being interview on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.She is being interviewed by Ed Balls, the former Labour shadow chancellor who is now a TV presenter. He asks her to confirm that workers will end up losing out because of the employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs) increase. Continue reading...
  
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• Ed Davey: care sector will be ‘pushed to brink’ by national insurance hike and should be exempt

  31-10-2024 12:24
  Lib Dem leader says rise in employers’ contributions risks worsening NHS crisisUK politics live – latest updatesThe Liberal Democrats have called on the government to exempt the social care sector from the increase in national insurance in Labour’s budget, as an organisation representing many smaller care providers warned that the impact would be substantial.In the biggest fiscal measures of Wednesday’s budget, raising an additional £25bn a year by the end of the pa
  
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• Carers’ earnings limit to rise by £45 a week after allowance scandal

  30-10-2024 19:55
  
  Guardian investigation revealed scale of penalties for unwitting breaches of carer’s allowance earnings limitsBudget 2024: key points at a glanceThe earnings limit placed on people who claim government support for taking care of disabled, sick and elderly loved ones will rise by £45 a week, the chancellor has announced, after a six-month Guardian investigation into the carer’s allowance scandal.The changes will enable full-time unpaid carers who provide care for at least 35 hou
  
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• Creaking public services are costing companies in absent staff, employers tell TUC

  28-10-2024 07:00
  
  Union group urges chancellor to better fund health, social care and childcare to get staff back to work and boost productivityUK businesses are losing staff working time because of waits for healthcare or caring duties due to underfunded public services, according to a poll of managers before Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ first budget.More than half of 500 UK business leaders polled for the TUC said workers had to take time off in the last year because of problems accessing public services. Co
  
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• Why Rivals is the horny, hopeful show we need, Marina Hyde on Musk’s $1m voter gifts, the secret life of a care worker, and Philippa Perry on lying – podcast

  26-10-2024 06:00
  
  Why does Rivals’ high-camp, warts-and-all frolic through the 80s make Zoe Williams feel so nostalgic? Is it wrong for Elon Musk to offer voters $1m to get Trump elected? ‘I was blown away by how meaningful and interesting it is: one woman’s ‘love story’ to the caring profession. And Philippa Perry advises a reader to be more forgiving to a friend who is a perpetual liar Continue reading...
  
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• A royal commission on social care may be coming – don’t despair, it may actually work this time | Polly Toynbee

  24-10-2024 15:50
  
  Though royal commissions have a bad reputation, this is a real chance to establish a realistic plan before it is too lateA collective groan greeted the rumour that the government will announce yet another royal commission on social care. The fear is that it just kicks this problem into the blue yonder; it was Harold Wilson who jibed that royal commissions “take minutes and waste years”, which can be politically convenient.The world of the NHS and local government needs a resolution t
  
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• Woman, 60, arrested on suspicion of manslaughter over Dorset care home deaths

  23-10-2024 23:13
  
  Police confirm ‘possible carbon monoxide poisoning’ is main line of inquiry after fatalities at care home in Swanage A 60-year-old woman has been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter by detectives investigating the deaths of three people at a care home in Dorset.Officers are still treating the deaths at the Gainsborough care home in Swanage as unexplained and have confirmed that “possible carbon monoxide poisoning” is the primary line of inquiry. Seven other residents we
  
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• Three people dead at care home in Dorset

  23-10-2024 14:33
  Home evacuated and four others taken to hospital, with early line of inquiry that residents may have been affected by carbon monoxideThree people have died at a care home in Dorset and four more have been taken to hospital.Dorset police said: “We received a report at 7.16am to three people who had been found deceased at a care home in Ulwell Road in Swanage.
  “Inquiries are being carried out to establish the full circumstances and we are continuing to liaise with our partner agencies.
  
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• The secret life of a careworker – ‘I was blown away by how meaningful and interesting it is’

  22-10-2024 11:00
  
  When anxiety forced Kathryn Faulke to give up her NHS job and became a care worker, she never thought she would enjoy it. Now, she has written a ‘love story’ of a book about the professionCare work, Kathryn Faulke thought as she scoured job adverts, “is a rubbish job. They’re not going to turn me down.” She had, after all, been a senior dietitian and worked for several years in the NHS – a career that had left her with anxiety and burnout. “I saw an adve
  
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• We want a happy old age at home, not in a home | Letter

  20-10-2024 18:30
  
  My friends and I don’t want to become just grist to the mill of a profit-making institution, says Bryony LeeEmma Beddington (Opinion, 13 October) is right about the many frightening prospects of ageing, but she did not mention the one prospect people of my age (76) speak about together with horror most often: “having to go into a home”, or “being put into a home” by one’s children.For many women of my age, home-making was the priority, and not something to be
  
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• Care home chain Care UK sold to US property investment company

  18-10-2024 18:18
  
  Exclusive: Welltower deal comes as private providers lobby government for a greater role in NHSOne of Britain’s largest care home chains, Care UK, has been sold to an American property investment company, the Guardian can reveal, in a deal that comes as private providers lobby the government for a greater role in the NHS.Care UK, which operates more than 150 residential homes for older people, has been the subject of sale speculation since 2018. Continue reading...
  
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• From the ‘cliff edge’ to the DWP: what will UK carer’s allowance review look at?

  17-10-2024 08:00
  
  Review called after revelation that thousands of unpaid carers have been forced to repay accidental overpaymentsMinisters are to review carer’s allowance overpayments after the Guardian revealed tens of thousands of unpaid carers were being forced to collectively pay back millions of pounds – and in some cases faced criminal prosecution – for unwitting and often minor breaches of benefit rules.What are the issues the independent review will need to look at, and what options may
  
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• Guilt, worry, resentment: how the ‘club sandwich’ generation juggles caring for parents, children and grandparents

  13-10-2024 13:00
  With people surviving longer and with greater infirmity, the pressures on adults living among three other generations are increasingLike the doctor in a corny joke, the study published last week by the Journals of Gerontology had some good news and some bad news.The good news, say researchers from University College London (UCL) and Oxford University, is that people born in the 1940s and 1950s are living longer than their parents. The bad news is that they are more likely to be ill. Continue rea
  
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• The Care Dilemma by David Goodhart review – a flawed study of family life

  13-10-2024 08:00
  
  The Road to Somewhere author argues that the liberating impact of feminism has harmed our children in a book shot through with claims that don’t stand up to scrutinyIt was mostly in the small hours that I first read David Goodhart’s new book on caring. By coincidence, it arrived as I was trying to look after my dying father at one end of the country and my own family at the other, while simultaneously attempting to work. Well, that’s life: there are millions of us in the same
  
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• When private equity companies prioritise profit over care home residents | Letter

  11-10-2024 18:26
  For these companies, economies of scale, low wages, minimum staffing and cost-cutting are the order of the day, writes Norman EdwardsYour editorial on the failures of the privatisation of care services (7 October) rightly highlights the shameful situation that has developed for older people in residential care. The Nuffield Foundation’s research clearly shows that the increasing outsourcing of this provision is associated with lower standards of care.I have known many care home staff and m
  
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• When care homes just don't care | Letter

  11-10-2024 18:26
  
  Is it right that frail, sick and vulnerable elderly people should be used simply as profit generators for private equity companies, asks Norman EdwardsYour editorial on the failures of the privatisation of care services (7 October) rightly highlights the shameful situation that has developed for older people in residential care. The Nuffield Foundation’s research clearly shows that the increasing outsourcing of this provision is associated with lower standards of care.I have known many car
  
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• Record number of men in care work in England as immigration eases jobs crisis

  10-10-2024 07:00
  
  Sector has hired 185,000 foreign recruits in last two years, figures show, more than offsetting drop in British workersOne in five care workers in England are now men, the highest level on record, according to new figures showing immigration is reducing the social care staffing crisis.Care work traditionally has been female-dominated but men now make up 21% of the workforce in England, the first time they have represented more than a fifth of care workers since records began. Continue reading...
  
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• Enda Walsh delivers a five-star dazzler and Forced Entertainment make mischief at Dublin theatre festival

  09-10-2024 17:20
  Safe House is a haunting song cycle by Walsh and Anna Mullarkey while the experimental company’s Signal to Noise pushes language to breaking pointIn a Dublin theatre festival programme jammed with fresh perspectives and inventive productions, Safe House (★★★★★), a new collaboration between writer-director Enda Walsh and composer Anna Mullarkey, is a dazzling achievement. In the form of a song cycle, with one live performer on stage, the experience is one of se
  
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• The Guardian view on privatised care failures: a service crying out for change | Editorial

  07-10-2024 20:00
  
  The poor record of for-profit care homes must lead to a rethink on how public services are organisedThe government has yet to respond in detail to the latest, shocking findings about the poor performance of for-profit social care providers, and what a report from Oxford University calls the “astounding pace” of children’s home privatisation. But the revelation that almost all the residential care settings forced to close by regulators in the 12 years to 2023 were privately run
  
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• Sammy Morris obituary

  07-10-2024 18:15
  My friend Sammy Morris, who has died aged 77, was a factory worker and later a care assistant. His socialist principles guided him throughout his life, not least in the kind of jobs he took on and in the union activity he undertook at his various workplaces.After being employed in factories supplying the shipyards of the Glasgow area from the age of 15, Sammy became a member of CND, where he found out about the Factory for Peace in Govan, and joined up. A workers’ co-op, it was based on th
  
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• English council may ask parents of children taken into care to pay half of costs

  06-10-2024 16:05
  
  Derbyshire authority proposes asking for up to £113 a week for children in care under voluntary arrangementsA cash-strapped English council is considering charging parents of children taken into local authority care half of the weekly cost of looking after them.Derbyshire county council said “unprecedented financial challenges” meant it had little option but to “maximise alternative sources of income” to try to reduce the strain on its children’s services. The
  
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• Children raised by friends or relatives are being ‘plunged into poverty’, says UK charity

  06-10-2024 12:00
  
  A lack of financial and emotional support for kinship carers could push up to 18,000 children into an already overstretched foster care systemChildren are being “plunged into ­poverty”, a charity says, because of a lack of support for kinship ­carers – relatives or family friends who step in to look after children after a crisis.Kinship carers, who are often grandparents, are twice as likely as other adults to rely on food banks and four times as likely to fall behind o
  
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• Coroners warn of risk to lives without urgent reform of NHS adult care

  06-10-2024 08:00
  
  Health secretary Wes Streeting told to speed up changes as inability to free up hospital bed linked to deaths of patientsHealth secretary Wes Streeting has been urged to speed up reforms to the adult care system in the wake of patient deaths after two coroners warned him of the impact insufficient care beds and service provision are having on the NHS.Last month, coroners sent two ­prevention of future deaths (PFD) reports to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) after the ­inab
  
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• Private firms ran almost all care homes forced to shut for breaches in England

  06-10-2024 07:00
  
  Study finds more than 90% of facilities for children and 98% of those for adults that were closed down were run for profitAlmost all the care homes shut down for endangering children or vulnerable adults were run to make a profit, according to a landmark study examining the long-term impact of outsourcing care to the private sector.Research published last week by Oxford University reveals that 98% (804 out of 816) of the adult care homes closed by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in England to
  
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• Woman who lay dead in flat for three years wrote she was ‘starving’ in diary

  03-10-2024 19:06
  Inquest hears how 38-year-old Laura Winham, who was deaf and had schizophrenia, wrote of struggling to buy foodA vulnerable woman who lay dead unnoticed in a social housing flat for more than three years wrote in her diary that she was starving and running out of food, an inquest has heard.The “mummified and almost skeletal” remains of 38-year-old Laura Winham, who was deaf and had schizophrenia, were found in her flat in Woking in May 2021. Her family, whom she had asked to stop con
  
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• Rare court records show how poor women pioneered foster care in 1600s

  03-10-2024 06:00
  Vital role looking after destitute children gave these women unusual degree of power for the time, say researchersIn June 1697, at a sitting of the quarter session court in Preston, Lancashire, a widow called Alice Brewer submitted a petition in which she demanded to be paid her due.Brewer, described as “very poor, old and necessitous”, had been caring for 12 years for a “poor distressed child” called Anne Helme, which entitled her to a small annual payment from the local
  
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