Single Room Drive For Scottish Care Homes

The Care Commission has outlined its policy to work with Care Homes for Older People in order to drive forward the requirement to offer the choice of a single room to residents from next year. At a recent Board Meeting in Dumfries, senior officials from the Care Commission agreed to commit to a policy to enforce the National Care Standards and ensure the basic right of the option of a single bedroom is available to all. Now the Care Commission has committed to working with owners and management of Scotland’s Care Homes to help them work towards meeting this standard and to continue to increase the quality of care for their residents.

Liz Norton, director of Adult Services Regulation for the Care Commission, said: “The standards have been introduced by Scottish Ministers to help improve the quality of life of older people and highlight the importance of privacy, dignity, choice and independence for people living in care homes.  

“The standards are unequivocal about the basic right to a single room for those who want it and the Care Commission is committed to ensuring that this crucial element of the standards is met.

“Care home providers have had more than five years to plan for these changes so it is important to remember that this has not happened overnight.

“However, we recognise that this will be a difficult undertaking for many homes and we will actively work with service providers, service users and commissioners of services through the inspection regime to ensure that by 31 March 2007 there is an action plan, agreed with each service provider, in place to ensure that all service users have the choice of a single bedroom by 31 December 2007.”

The National Care Standards, which were published by Scottish Ministers in 2001 and came into effect in April 2002, state that by 31 December 2007 all existing care homes will be able to offer single rooms to residents should they request one.*

Care Commission research has shown that of Scotland’s 1501 care homes, 46 still continue to offer multi-occupancy rooms (three or more residents) to 429 residents. In addition 583 care homes continue to offer a total of 5249 places in double rooms.

Ms Norton added: “We are now living in the 21st Century and the Care Commission considers multi-occupancy bedrooms are unacceptable to the vast majority of adults using care services.

“Therefore, it is only by exception and in situations of positive choice and express consent where the use of multi-occupancy bedrooms in care homes for adults can continue in use beyond December 2007.

“Double bedrooms are considered suitable for use by married couples, partners or other people with close personal relationships. Positive choice and the express consent of both people using shared bedrooms in care homes for adults will become a condition of registration for some care homes for adults after December 2007.

“The availability of care home places generally, has some effect on the availability of single bedrooms. Therefore there are some local authority areas with a higher prevalence of double and multi-occupancy bedrooms than others, which means some areas will be significantly more affected than others by increasing the availability of single bedrooms.

“It is essential that the Care Commission adopt a partnership approach to increasing choice of single bedrooms which involves all key stakeholders. Organisations representing people who use care services, carers, local authorities and health bodies need to be clear about the Care Commission’s policy position and become partners in a strategy for improvement.

”While it is an extremely challenging scenario for many care homes, the huge benefits of improving choice and enhancing dignity and privacy for service users are clear and significant and we should not lose sight of this fact.”