Age UK response to CQC issues notification regarding Allied Healthcare

Age UK's response to CQC likely warning of failure about one of the bigger home care providers, Allied Healthcare. 

Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director at Age UK said:

“Given the fragile state of the care market today’s news is unsurprising, but it is still massively concerning for the thousands of older people and their families who receive services from Allied Healthcare. Local authorities have a duty to ensure older people stay safe and cared for in these situations and have plans in place to ensure this happens, and we can only hope that these prove up to the job – which is not an easy one, with more than half of the country potentially affected.

“It’s bad enough when a care home operator gets into trouble but in some ways it is worse still when this happens with home care, because the population of those in need is highly dispersed and the risk of overlooking a vulnerable older person is greater.”

“Earlier this week the Department of Health and Social Care published a vision for prevention which has been widely welcomed, but for as long as our social care system is in such a precarious state Ministers are whistling in the wind in setting out plans for a positive future. The Social Care Green Paper is now more than a year overdue and the extra funding for care in last week’s Budget was welcome but nowhere near enough. Meanwhile social care continues to burn.

“We urgently need the Government to grasp how grave the situation facing social care now is and respond with the funding and reforms required to tackle it. Workforce shortages and grossly inadequate funding are undermining the quality as well as the availability of care and older and disabled people and their families are paying an increasingly heavy price.”