A private care homes leader has signed up to a plan that will cut care home placements in Dundee.
Ewan Findlay of Scottish Care, which represents private care home providers, is a signatory to the plan that also looks to reduce hospital beds for the elderly.
Exactly where the axe will fall has yet to be decided but Dundee Community Health Partnership, meeting in King’s Cross Hospital, were left in no doubt things will have to change.
Dundee will be unable to look after all elderly people in future, if health and social services keep doing what they do now. Over 25 years, total numbers aged 85 and over are predicted to rise by 93%.
The plan, signed by Mr Findlay and others, states “Our current service delivery model will not allow delivery against the increased demand that will arise as a result of this demographic shift,” and that agreement will be sought on the “disinvestment level from care home placement budget” and “the level of acute bed closure.”
Over £152 million will be spent caring for the elderly in Dundee this coming year.
The Scottish Government set up a “Change Fund” and invited community planning partnerships to apply for a share of the cash and make submissions about how they would spend it. The fund’s aim was to help switch more care away from institutions like hospitals and care homes and closer to people’s homes.
The proposals place more emphasis on rehabilitation and self-help and look to volunteers to support older people in their homes through “lend-a-hand schemes.”
Lucy Rennie, Dundee CHP’s strategy and performance manager, said the plan was submitted to the Scottish Government last month. No official confirmation of Dundee funding has been given but she expected it to be around £2.1 to £2.2 million.
“Our total cumulative spend is not a huge amount of money but it is meant to be a catalyst for change, to help us start remodelling care while stopping some of the stuff we are doing now,” she said.
She acknowledged the change plan was written in very general terms and details would have to be worked up.
She added that an event was planned for mid-May to bring together partners in the local authority, health service, private sector and voluntary organisations to “try and refine some of the detail of some of the programmes.”
Part of the process will be reducing the number of acute hospital beds and care home placements so the money “released” could be put to alternative uses, delivering support services in people’s own homes and other community settings.
Dundee CHP chairman Betty Ward said that although the Change Fund was not a huge amount of money, she thought it was going to be “very helpful to the way we reconfigure our services.”