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In order to improve residents’ standards of life there needs to be a “seismic shift” in thinking on what constitutes a care home, delegates were told at Community Care Live Scotland last week, writes Amy Taylor.

Jacquie Roberts, chief executive of the Scottish Care Commission, the body that regulates care in Scotland, said that care homes needed to be invested in and seen as providing an alternative way of living which the resident was in charge of.

She said that there were many care homes where the staff were good and caring but the residents only came to life when someone visited them. “I have done an inspection and people got excited because it’s a visitor,” she said.

Roberts added that at the moment older people did not expect enough from care homes. Almost all of the complaints about care homes received by the commission come from residents’ families or carers or professionals visiting the home opposed to the residents themselves.