England’s nursing homes failing on safety and quality, state of care report claims

37% of England’s 4,000 nursing homes have failed on the grounds of safety. This is according to the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) ‘The state of adult social care services 2014 to 2017’, published today, which looked at 33,000 inspections of 24,000 different services under its new “tougher” regulatory inspection regime for the care sector.

With more than one million vulnerable people accessing care from these services, the CQC has highlighted in its review that drug administrative errors, staff shortages and falls sustained by nursing home residents contributed to these figures. There are staffing issues across the sector because of a drop in the recruitment and retention of nurses. The CQC also found that almost 25% of care homes and home helps were rated not safe, whilst 17% of community support, including sheltered housing fell short of the mark.

The CQC said that it recognises that there is “fragility” in the sector “influenced by funding and resource pressures”. However, the report did find that the majority of adult social care services are of a high quality and many continue to improve.

Andrea Sutcliffe, the Chief CQC Inspector of Adult Social Care, said that the amount of funding available remained an issue for the sector and a “long-term solution” needed to be found but the lack of funding was not an excuse.

Future Care Capital is a charity committed to engaging everyone in the design of health and care provision. The charity’s mission focuses on delivering improvements for those in receipt of care. It is by being more strategic and planning for the future that we can see in greater improvements across health and care provision. Future Care Capital will launch a report about the use data to transform services across the country. The CQC has highlighted the need to press ahead with a renewed focus on tackling the key historical issues holding back the sector in general.