Scottish ministers have told parliamentarians in the West Highlands that they’re willing to set up a taskforce of NHS, council, care providers and communities to rethink social care for older people amid a growing crisis of closures.

The group will be asked to consider a proposal to build four new care home ‘clusters’, funded by diverting the millions currently spend by NHS Highland on people waiting in hospital for a care home place or care package.

The news was revealed at the first Highland Social Care Conference co-hosted by Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire MP Angus MacDonald, a Liberal Democrat, and his SNP Holyrood counterpart, Kate Forbes MSP.

It follows the publication of a report by Mr MacDonald and researcher Lucy Swale highlighting surging demand for care and staffing shortages that are together ‘jeopardising the viability’ of care homes in the Highlands and leading to people having to move to care homes far from where they live.

The report says in the last 10 years the Highlands has lost nearly one in five care homes for older people, while the number of people aged 75 and over has increased by more than 70%.

Mr MacDonald told conference attendees the crisis in the Highlands should be regarded as the ‘canary in the coalmine’ for elderly care provision for the rest of Scotland – and a solution that works in the Highlands will work anywhere in rural Scotland:

“The people who are impacted are the people who have no voice, and they are the most vulnerable in our society, and we don't hear their silent scream. Already there is considerable misery from people who are being taken away from their families.

“We have to understand that the problem is going to get much, much worse, and we need a solution.”

Kate Forbes, MSP for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch, says a solution must be found which allows people to move to a care home without having to move away from their communities.

Speaking to the conference, she pointed to how innovation in the Highlands has shaped approaches across the rest of Scotland – the creation of the Highlands and Islands Medical Service more than a century ago forming a blueprint for the NHS and health and social care integration in the region happening long before it became national policy.

Ms Forbes cited the work of Urram, a charity set up to work with NHS Highland, Highland Hospice and Highland Council to support care for the residents in Morvern and Ardnamurchan – and said the taskforce working towards a Highland approach to care must be led by communities themselves:

“I think we can be the forerunner of a new partnership on social care, working in a flexible way, with local communities, with local bodies, the health service and social care providers,” Ms Forbes told healthandcare.scot.

“We have seen examples of that, but the next example needs to be built now, not in an emergency, not when there is a care home at risk of closure.”

Call for investment

The Highland Care conference was held in Fort William on the day that the local authorities’ organisation COSLA called for three quarters of a billion of new investment in Scottish social care.

The conference heard from a local doctor specialising in the care of older people that the number of care beds in NHS Highland and Highland Council’s area has reduced from 283 in 2011 to 209.

Meanwhile, of the 47 care homes in the Highlands, only eight are in the West Highlands, from Ullapool south to Fort William – and only one of which is now run privately.

Mr MacDonald’s report calls for four new 60-bed “care clusters” to be created, each with on-site staff accommodation, in Skye, Fort William, Ullapool and Fort Augustus.

These integrated hubs – where possible, he says, built adjacent to existing NHS centres – could provide residential and respite care, step-down beds, and housing for staff.

He says the estimated cost of £80m is affordable in the impact such centres would have on reducing delayed discharge – which has cost NHS Highland £154m over the past ten years.

“I would say the biggest threat to the wellbeing of people in rural Scotland is the care of the elderly,” Mr MacDonald told healthandcare.scot.

“Investing in care home clusters would resolve misery, it would reduce a lot of time spent by people travelling to visit family moved far away and, on top of that, it make financial sense.”

 

Read more: Care home staff numbers increase after record low; Care worker visa changes ‘inhumane’ and risks services; Highland GPs to reclaim vaccine services; Rural hospitals and the child nurse predicament;

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