Residential care could be a thing of the past

Residential care can be eliminated over the long-term through the expansion of extra care and other home-based services, a social services director claimed yesterday.

Tony Rich, director of social services and housing at Bromley Council, told Laing and Buisson’s annual extra care housing conference that if councils “got the transition to extra care housing” right, residential care could become a thing of the past.

Currently, numbers in residential care dwarf those in extra care.

But Rich said Bromley had cut residential and nursing care numbers from almost 1,200 to less than 850 over the past five years through expanding extra care and other home-based services.