The specific recommendations are to:
Build three brand new care homes
Modernise and expand three existing homes
Close seven of the Local Authority’s older-style residential care homes (two of which have been temporarily closed since 2021).
Seven of the County Council’s nursing and ‘step-down’ from hospital homes would remain unchanged.
The recommendations follow a comprehensive public consultation which ran for ten weeks from September to November and will be scrutinised by the Health and Adult Social Care Select Committee on 16 January, ahead of consideration by the Executive Lead Member for Adult Social Care and Public Health, Councillor Liz Fairhurst, at her Decision Day in February.
The changes would mean that the County Council concentrates on the delivery of specialist nursing care, complex dementia care and short term support – to either prevent an admission to hospital or support a discharge. This would not only meet the needs of a growing number of older people in Hampshire in the longer term, but is care that could be provided more cost effectively by the Local Authority in its own homes.
Should the recommendations be approved, the County Council would operate a network of 13 homes, increasing the overall number of directly provided beds from the current 900 to 1,000.
Transforming County Council in-house residential and nursing care
Final recommendations have been published this week relating to proposals to transform the County Council’s in-house residential and nursing accommodation for older people to better meet the future requirements of a growing elderly population with increasing needs, including complex dementia and nursing care
read ( words)
Jan 9 2024