Care home residents being sent hundreds of miles from friends and family

A fifth of all care home residents have been sent out of their own area to receive care - with some residents sent up to 450 miles away from friends and family, according to new Freedom of Information (FOI) data.

One person from Lambeth, in London, was placed more than 500 miles from their home authority in Aberdeenshire, and another, from East Sussex, was placed in Glasgow, it was revealed.

The new data, covering the past four years, was requested by the Labour Party from care-commissioning local authorities. Additional figures were derived from the Adult Social Care Finance Returns for 2014/15 to 2017/18.

Barbara Keeley MP, Labour’s shadow minister for social care, said: “It is unacceptable that nearly a fifth of people in care homes are not able to receive care in their own area.”

The NHS Long Term Plan was unveiled earlier this year by Health and Social Care minister Matt Hancock, who has on numerous occasions stated that he would like to see more social care in the community.

However, Ms Keeley added: “This makes a mockery of the Government’s claim that they want people to receive care at home. Not only are fewer people getting home care, but others are being sent to care homes hundreds of miles from where they live.”

Labour sent FOI requests to 152 care-commissioning local authorities receiving at least partial responses from 111 local authorities.

Every local authority that responded to the FOI request admitted to sending older and disabled people out-of-area for residential care.

The data showed that working-age adults were disproportionately more likely to be sent out-of-area for care with more than one in three residents in that age group being placed in a residential care setting outside their home area.

Alluding to the much-delayed social care green paper, Ms Keeley said: “If the Government is serious about supporting older and disabled people to live the lives they choose, then they must increase investment in social care across the board.

“Labour would provide more care in people’s homes, with 160,000 people who currently get no help at all receiving support to remain independent in their community.”