Lifeline dangled for care homes facing axe in row over funding

NHS Sheffield has been consulting on plans agreed in principle in January to halt an historic arrangement of extra funding to help meet the high costs of Birch Avenue and Woodland View care homes.

Officials argued the homes, in Chapeltown and Norton, which are run by two housing associations and care for 100 patients with dementia, are more expensive than others and do not represent value for money at a time when resources are under pressure.

For most patients in Sheffield, the average cost of standard nursing care homes is about £500 per week, paid for through the NHS, local authority or by the patient or family.

But the £500 for patients in Birch Avenue and Woodland View has not been enough to meet running costs, so NHS Sheffield was providing a “top-up” payment which officers complained amounted to a subsidy.

The arrangement was put in place in the early 1990s when Middlewood Hospital and the old Chapeltown Nursing Home closed and the residents and some NHS staff moved to the homes.

The plans to withdraw the funding and shut the two homes led to an outcry and more than 16,000 people signed petitions to try to save them.

Now, board papers to be considered at a crunch meeting next week reveals five options that will be considered, including the recommendation the admission criteria for the homes are changed so they can be kept open.

NHS Sheffield says the extended four month consultation, which involved representations from residents and their families, as well as staff, charities and a national expert on dementia, revealed the homes do not just offer standard care, for which they are paid the standard contract rate but are offering enhanced care for some residents, suited to people with dementia who have complex care needs.

Some of these residents could not be accommodated elsewhere and the report acknowledges warnings over the impact moving them and others might have on their wellbeing as well as glowing praise for the quality of care from their families.

It now proposes re-commissioning Birch Avenue and Woodland View as providers of care for people with dementia with complex care needs, and changing the admission criteria accordingly.

Existing residents who do not meet the changed criteria would not be moved out. The change would happen over time.

Other options include maintaining the status quo indefinitely, pressing ahead with the withdrawal of funding, meaning the homes will shut, to withdraw the top-up but allow three years for the closures, or withdraw funding with only one of the homes to shut.

The papers also acknowledge that if the top-up funding were withdrawn, the saving to NHS Sheffield would not be £2.8m because the true value of the care provided by Birch Avenue and Woodland View is higher, and taking into account the costs of moving those residents with complex care needs and finding alternative homes, if they were even available, and possible staff redundancies.

Simon Kirk, Director of Strategy at NHS Sheffield, said: “The £2.8m ‘top-up’ funding that we have been paying to Birch Avenue and Woodland View does not represent value for money for the tax payer and is a system that is unfair to other residents in other care homes across the city.

“However... we are confident that re-commissioning an enhanced care service from the homes will provide a model that can work for the people in the city now and into the future.”