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Two care home residents can still share a bedroom in a care home if they want. Chris Caple sorts out the confusion over the new national minimum standards and the question of minimum room size.

Will the new national minimum standards for residetial care put an end to shared bedrooms in care homes?

Although the consultation process for the national minimum standards in care homes for older people is to all intents and purposes done and dusted, heated debate about their implications is ongoing.

The standards were announced in March 2001 with a view to most being implemented from 1 April 2002. They include minimum standards relating to choice of home, a variety of health and personal care matters, daily life and social activities, complaints procedures and protection, the environment of homes, staffing and management, and administrative procedures and safeguards.

They will be regulated by a new independent body called the National Care Standards Commission, which is currently taking shape.

The most earnest debate has centred on the standards coming under the heading of environment, in particular the space requirements for each resident or service user's accommodation.

Many residential and nursing home providers are claiming that the investment required to provide rooms that meet the new minimum floor space requirements will put them out of business. The government is saying that these providers have been given enough time to make the appropriate changes, and has set longer deadlines for those standards which require the most work to implement.

There may or may not be room for negotiation on this. As reported in Community Care ("Ready for Take-Off?", 2 August), the standards were initially touted as non-negotiable, with an aside that the "local discretion" cited in the Care Standards Act 2000 would be minimal.

More recently, however, the National Care Standards Commission has adopted a much less dictatorial stance and has started talking about what is pragmatic and using words such as "partnership".

The debate about the minimum size of rooms has led many of the other standards to be viewed in either over-simplified ways, or to be misinterpreted. As a result, one myth that has developed among providers and health and social care professionals is that the new standards will outlaw shared rooms. This is not the case.

This misconception was highlighted when I was quizzed by someone concerned about an elderly client living in a private residential care home. The client has shared a bedroom with another woman of a similar age and background for three years and the women have formed a close friendship and are happy sharing. The worker was worried about what would happen were they forced apart.

My answer was that the implementation of the minimum national standards need not affect the client's current living arrangements at all.

Standard 23.7 states: "Where rooms are shared, they are occupied by no more than two service users who have made a positive choice to share with each other."

There is, however, the issue of whether the double room the client shares meets the new minimum space requirement (16 square metres). There is also a standard that says from 1 April 2007 existing homes that do not provide 80 per cent of places in single rooms must do so.

So if the client lives in a home that doesn't meet this standard, then some of the double rooms will have to be converted into singles. But this need not affect the elderly friends as long as their wish to continue sharing a room has been communicated to the owner or manager of their home. C

Chris Caple is assistant director, Anchor Trust.