The dangers of exposing social care to the whim of market forces were underlined when the High Court ordered a Southern Cross Healthcare subsidiary to relinquish control of a care home in Northamptonshire.
At the beginning of August, the Commission for Social Care Inspection raised concerns about standards at Alton Centre care home at Wellingborough and was dissatisfied with Active Care Partnership's response and took urgent recourse to law.
Yet, reading the CSCI inspection report of a visit 10 months ago, no one would have guessed how bad things would get. All the standards outcomes were assessed as "adequate" or "good". Sure, there was room for improvement, but the word "poor" did not figure in the inspectors' report. Indeed there was praise for what had been done to make the home a better place.
In short, you would feel safe placing a relative or loved one in Alton Centre.
Perhaps the clues to what would happen lay not within Alton Centre's walls, but within London's City walls.
After a good trading year in 2007 when Southern Cross Healthcare's shares nearly doubled in value to 599p, in the first two months of this year practically all those gains were wiped out. In June the stock fell 58.5% after a profits warning and at lunchtime today shares were trading at 127p.
This numerical roller-coaster does not fill one with confidence and questions must be raised about the effect on service delivery.
So, the moral is, when choosing a care home read the inspectors' report by all means. But keep your eyes on the Financial Times too as the machinations of the City are more than ever influencing the quality of our social care.
Better still, hire an economist.
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