Evaluating UK Residential Care Policy: Developments and Challenges

This report analyzes the developments in residential care policy for older people in the UK, tracing its evolution from post-World War II to the present day. It identifies key policy changes, current provisions, and the dual public and private channels of care. The report highlights challenges such as funding issues, varying levels of care, organizational difficulties, integration complexities, long-term care variations, and staffing shortages, including recruitment and training problems. To address these challenges, the report suggests improvements like better wage rates, comprehensive training programs, diversified funding sources, and enhanced system integration to ensure effective and coordinated care services for the elderly population in the UK.

Care of older people

Table of Contents
Care of older people..............................................................................................................................1
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
Developments in residential care policy in UK.................................................................................3
Challenges related to provision of residential care in UK..................................................................4
Suggestions for improvements to overcome the challenges identified...............................................5
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................6
References:............................................................................................................................................7

Introduction
Care for older people refers to the duties of care which must be provided to older
people living in a community including empowerment, individual care, dignity, self-esteem,
advocacy, independence and respect as well (Lapid and et.al., 2020). It also involves family
and the care providers in care. Residential care refers to the care and support provided to
older people who are living in a residential setting instead of living in their personal homes or
family homes etc.
The report will aim to discuss the developments in the provisions of residential policy in UK,
some challenges related to this policy and also provide various solutions to overcome these
challenges.
Developments in residential care policy in UK
In UK the government believes that the older people should also be able to enjoy the
health and their independence for as long as possible like the rest of the population. The
independence of those people depends majorly on the support and health care services
provided to them. The residential care for older people in UK have a long troubling history.
The aspects of residential care policy involving its history are explained as follows:
Historical content
The provision of care for older people in England was marled after the Post World
War-2 (Veenhuizen and et.al., 2021). The legislation was introduced that established the
modern British welfare state. This legislation introduced the requirements fit local authorities
in order to provide residential care for older people in the country. It also introduced the need
for empowerment to older people for financially supporting residents in home which are
provided in profit and non-profit centres. After that long term care became the duty of
National Health Care (NHS) which was free of charge. The subsequent legislation in regular
increases and changed the responsibilities of NHS and also of the local authorities for
providing long term residential care such as home help, day care and meals.
Key policy changes
In the last some decades there have been significant changes introduced in the long
term residential care policies in UK. In the Post World Care zone the local authorities of UK
in 1970-1980 failed to keep pace with the increasing paid for residential long term care
services with the size of older population. In the long term hospital provisions of residential
care were reduced subsequently with large deduction. The central governments expenditure
on the low income older people increased 10 times in 1980 (Mozley and et.al., 2017).
Changes in regulations on payment of supplements to older people with low incomes were
introduced and board and lodging payments were made available for entering public or
private residential nursing homes. This resulted in huge expansion in provision.
Current policy
All the changes that were introduced in the past lead the local authorities to return to
their responsibilities of funding and arranging long term care in residential and nursing
homes.

The long term care policy aims to provide the support and care need to people who are no
longer able to take care of themselves on their own. The policy attempts to provide and
support living activities in accordance with the preferred living lifestyles while ensuinf that
general well-being and comfort in culturally appropriate ways is maintained as well. The
policy tends to provide person centred care to people which is based on the support servces in
homes for enabling them to live independently as long as possible (Barron and West, 2017).
The physical and social environments available for the provision of residential care
can help in supporting the desired lifestyles for the residents while appropriately responding
to the physical and biological changes that come with the ageing process of people. The
policy involves the staff need for accessing supporting occupational health and safety devices
because their work need a considerable amount of manual handling of people. They are
associated with higher incidents of musculoskeletal disorders for the staff. The risks of staff
can also be minimised through improving the residential mobility (Steels and Simpson,
2017). Further-more, many supportive assistive technologies and digital devices are made
available to the service providers to support the wellness care models and empower the
individuals to minimize the risks of adverse events and provide feasible solutions which are
focused on the health and well-being of older people.
Main channel of care provision
The channels of care provisions involves both the channels i.e. public channels and
private channels as well. The public channels are free of cost and are for non-profits.
However the private channels of care involve the for profits organizations which provide
services for a charge.
Challenges related to provision of residential care in UK
 Funding issue: Funding in residential care have become a key political issue. The
long term care provisions states the services and personal and nursing cares as free. It
means the nursing element is free of charge for personal care in England and Whales
means tested which are not free (Crompton and et.al., 2020). For funding a
Commission fir funding of care and support have been appointed.
 Levels of long term care: There are different levels of care to be provided to different
people in residential care provisions. Every individual is different and have unique
needs. The care providers to have to ensure that they provide best services while
ensuring the preferred services of the older people. However, it is quite a difficult
task, which makes it as a challenge for the service providers to access the levels of
long term care to be provided to each and every user of residential care (Quirke and
et.al., 2021).
 Organization: The care providers have to ensure they provide their best services form
early emergency care to the specialised care throughout the discharge of older
people’s stagy in the hospital. Here the challenge arising is that ensuring the
organisations in hospitals so that the services are readily available and all the staff
members have all the support and equipment that they need for providing care to older
people.
 Integration: The key component of immediate care service is that it needs to be
integrated within the whole systems of care such as primary and secondary health

care, statutory and independent sectors, and Support and health care systems as well.
This creates a challenge for the provision of care entailing difficult multi-sectorial
work (Roche, 2019). This creates challenge in providing the residential care to older
people in UK.
 Variations in long term care: Some states in UK such as Netherlands is trying to
reduce the levels of provision particularly on the institutional care for older people.
However in some states such as Spain identified the need to expand. So the UK
Commission on long term care stated that care needs were not appropriate which were
being provided to the older people.
 Staffing issues: In most of the public channels for care providers such as NHS, the
staff is recruited through directly. Local authority services have been contracted out
due to the actual care provided by people working for private companies (Wittenberg
and et.al., 2019). Another issue is the issue of poor levels of pay and ineffective
training to the staffs have been identified. This have cited in scandals regarding the
poor standards of care and support services in residential care. The disputes for
difference between the social care and nursing care have also been noted.
The social workforce is mostly female and involves part time workface which is aged 50 and
over it. Their wages are significantly low.
 Challenges in recruitment and selection: In the residential care, various roles have
been estimated be vacant. The empty vacancy rate have been rising and the sector is
struggling to keep up with the demand. As a result the sector is struggling to recruit
registered nurses and care homes have viewed significant growth in vacancy rates.
Due to low wage rate and lack of training scandals, the residential care service
providers are facing this challenge (Van Breda, 2018).
 Redesigning services: The sector of residential care services is facing the challenge to
attempt to redesign services and modernise systems for growing, serious and
workforce shortages. This creates major challenge in providing the residential care
needs to the older people living in UK.
Suggestions for improvements to overcome the challenges identified
There have been various challenges which have been identified in the above section.
In order to overcome the challenges various solutions needs to be implemented. The
following suggestions are provided in relation to over the challenges identified in residential
care services:
 Better wage rate: As from the challenges identified a key challenge was the challenge
of poor recruitment and various staffing issues. The staff is being paid very low wage
rates. Their wage rate is slightly more than the wage rate of cleaners. It is
recommended that the staff must be paid a good wage rate so that the challenge of
staffing issues can be reduced. It will also help in attracting other employees too
which will help in reducing the challenge of recruitment and selection. It is not new
that the major motivation behind every employee is their salary and wages. If the
employees are not satisfied with their wage rate, they will be less motivated and will
tend to leave the organization and move into other sector which have better pay rates.

 Training programs: As in the challenges, staffing issues were also identified as
challenges. One of the issue in staffing issues was lack of adequate training. Staff is
not provided with adequate trainings which results in their poor performances in
providing various care services. It is recommended that in residential care various
training programs from time to time must be provided so that the staff is able to
provide better care services to the users of service i.e. older people.
 Diversified funding: The provisions of residential care faces the challenge of
inadequate funding. The lack of funding leads to lack of training programs and
appropriate equipment’s and inadequate services. So it is recommended that the
funding of residential care services must be diversified, so that adequate amounts of
funds can be generated. This will help in overcoming the financial challenges faced
by service providers.
 System integration: In the residential care services, integration among the services is
very essential. However, the service providers lack that. So it is recommended that the
systems should be integrated through various equipment’s such as database systems
and through providing better training to the employees so that they are to provide
services in effective and coordinated manner. This will help in elimination if the
challenge of lack of integration. It can also help in overcoming the challenges of
redesigning as the system integration will enable the service providers to rethink its
designs and structures as well.
Conclusion
From the above analysis, it can be concluded that, care for older people is the care
services related to their empowerment, health and well-being and their independence as well.
The developments in residential care was developed after the World War-2. However,
various changes were introduced from term to time. It have led to various changes in the
residential policy in UK. Various challenges in the policy have also been identified as
funding issues and staffing issues. Various recommendations to overcome these challenges
have been provided.

References:
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