Quality of care will 'help decide which homes stay open'

THE quality of the care provided by 10 residential homes and day centres whose futures have been thrown into doubt will be a factor in determining whether or not they remain open, it has emerged.

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The Derby Centre in Ormskirk and (inset) Woodlands Home for Older People in Clayton-le-Moors

The Lancashire County Council-run facilities are the subject of a controversial review that will assess their viability after the buildings from which they operate were deemed to be in “significantly poor condition”.

A public consultation is currently under way into the possible “reprovision” of the services - five care homes and five day centres - which could see them shut next year.

However, the authority - which stresses that no decisions have yet been taken - has now confirmed that service quality will be amongst the considerations it weighs when making its final decision.

It came during a meeting of the authority's health and adult services scrutiny committee, which heard concerns that not enough attention was being paid to how well people were being looked after in the under-threat facilities.

The care homes - Favordale (Colne), Grove House (Adlington), Milbanke (Kirkham), Thornton House (Thornton Cleveleys) and Woodlands (Clayton-le-Moors) - have a combined capacity to accommodate 229 people, roughly 45 at each location, with all bar Milbanke currently being at least 89 percent full.

Meanwhile, the day centres - Byron View (Colne, attached to Favordale), Derby Centre (Ormskirk), Milbanke Day Centre (Kirkham, attached to Milbanke care home), Teal Close, (Thornton Cleveleys, attached to Thornton House) and Vale View (Lancaster) - provide daytime support to older people, including those in the early stages of dementia, although Byron View and Teal House have so far not reopened after what were intended as temporary closures at the onset of the pandemic. The remainder are all at less than 60 percent capacity.

Petitions in defence of individual homes and day centres have sprung up across the county, garnering thousands of signatures in total.