We support, inform and speak on behalf of older people in care
9 January 2017: A recent Ombudsman report* says that local councils must ensure that providers maintain proper standards of care for their care home residents, even when the service is outsourced. This important conclusion is the result of an Investigation into a complaint by the daughter of a care home resident who suffered appalling neglect […] Read More...
19 December 2016: “A zero sum game” is the expression used by the Head of Public Sector at Grant Thornton UK plc in a valuable letter to the press this week, on how the savage funding cuts to adult social care affect the cost of acute health services. Echoing a point already familiar to readers […] Read More...
1 December 2016: The R&RA launches this new edition of its website today, and we hope our members and users will like its fresh new look. This has been specially designed for us to be clearer and easier to read: in particular in the smaller screen sizes, as so many of us now use our […] Read More...
23rd November 2016: There was little enough cheer in the Chancellor’s autumn statement for anyone, but his failure to heed so many reasoned calls for a more realistic approach to spending on social care is specially disappointing. “stupid and self-defeating” Even on purely economic grounds, the case for better funding of the public health and […] Read More...
12¸October 2016: This year’s State of Care report by the CQC uses a vivid mental image for the current state of adult social care in this country, describing the present “market” in provision as fragile and the sustainability of even present levels of care as in doubt. The Report confirms the picture of care homes […] Read More...
26 0ctober 2016: The all-party Health Select Committee has censured the Government for giving a false impression and using incorrect figures in its claims on extra Healtn Spending. Dr Sarah Wollaston, Chair of the all-party Health Select Committee has sent a letter to the Treasury, calling on the government to take action to finance social […] Read More...
22 September 2016: The King’s Fund assistant director of policy Richard Humphries is not given to wild exaggeration, so when he uses these terms to describe the state of our older people being denied the care they need to live with independence and dignity, a new prime minister whose first promise was a more equal […] Read More...
1 August 2016: Having been contacted today by a major news outlet for comments on the Daily Telegraph’s piece ‘China village names and shames people who do not take proper care of their elderly ‘ , Judy Downey, R&RA Chair, responded: (Would the R&RA like to comment and do we find the same phenomenon?) Well, […] Read More...
28 July 2016: A damning set of reports by CQC on private care homes operated by BUPA in Suffolk has found 4 out of 5 of them inadequate. Lack of proper backup for local managers, staff inadequacies, isolation of residents, and basic failures such as lack of cleanliness were all noted as factors. On BBC […] Read More...
7 July 2016 AT LAST – OFFICIAL GUIDANCE FOR BETTER DENTAL CARE IN CARE HOMES NICE’s new guidelines on Oral health for adults in care homes, to which we contributed, reinforces the messages in our sell-out publication,‘ Keep Smiling’. Ever since our inception, the R&RA has campaigned for improved dental care in care homes for […] Read More...