Care homes are seen as places of boredom and loneliness, where elderly people go as a “last resort”, according to the former minister for care who has called for sweeping reforms.
Paul Burstow has said that residential care has a poor reputation and that homes are woefully unprepared for the ageing population. He has calculated that, by 2030, 239,000 more elderly people will need full-time residential care, on top of the 450,000 people in homes at present.
Mr Burstow has warned of the emergence of a two-tier system, with the poorest-quality homes staffed by low-paid carers full of council-funded residents, and more modern settings “the exclusive preserve of people who can afford it”.
Mr Burstow, a Liberal Democrat and MP for Sutton and Cheam, was care minister until 2012 and has led a year-long commission into old-age care for the think-tank Demos.
In his report, he suggested that care homes now have such a bad reputation that they should be rebranded as “housing with care”. Some 43 per cent of people questioned for the report said that they would never move into a home no matter how frail they became, with more than half citing “the risk of neglect or abuse” as the main reason.
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One man who took part in the research said: “Nobody wants to go into a care home. That’s like saying, ‘We’ll go to Tower Bridge and jump off.’ ”
In England last year 7,654 cases of abuse in care homes were reported. The fear of maltreatment had now become a big problem for the sector, Mr Burstow said.
“The public broadly see housing with care homes as places of illness and frailty, where boredom and loneliness pervades, and where you would only go as a last resort,” he said.
“We can no longer be prepared to accept for others housing with care that we would not be happy to move into ourselves. This report sets out the road map for change and contains a set of robust recommendations designed to ensure that high-quality housing with care becomes a reality.”
Mr Burstow criticised the government’s performance on care, saying it had raised expectations that things would improve, with new requirements for wellbeing to be at the heart of old-age care, rights for personalised care plans and other improvements.
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His key recommendation is for NHS trusts to be made to sell the 50 million sq m (12,400 acres) of unused land they hold to allow new homes to be built. Other proposals include annual checks by the Care Quality Commission, the regulator, of those in residential care, a review of abuse cases and new licences to ensure that staff have been trained.
The report proposes “co-location” of care homes near colleges or nursery groups, so that residents feel part of the community.
Janet Morrison, of the charity Independent Age, said: “We strongly back the recommendation the CQC should conduct an annual workforce survey to tackle head-on worries that abuse and neglect are now rife.”