The care system looking after Wirral’s elderly and vulnerable is ‘simply not good enough.’

That was the view expressed at a council scrutiny committee last night – where elected members from across different parties expressed serious concerns about the service in the borough – where twenty care homes are currently rated as requring improvement.

Most notably, Graham Hodkinson, Director of Social Services at Wirral Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), admitted that the elderly care system is “simply not good enough”.

He added: “We don’t fund it highly enough and the quality of care is often nowhere near what we would expect.”

“The team do work hard to focus on improvement. There has recently been a proposal from the contracts team which looks at what happens when homes keep going into requires improvement and that looks at how we can actually cease contract with those establishments.

“That will have an impact in terms of the availability of beds across the system, it’s likely to have an impact on the hospital, but top and bottom we can’t continue to place people in homes that don’t meet the standards and we need to take action.”

Labour Councillor Tony Norbury, said: “I am very, very concerned regarding the standard of nursing home care and that’s why the working party has been set up.

“We’ve got 20 homes on the Wirral that are requiring improvement. What I need to know and what I want the committee to investigate is where do we go when these nursing homes are constantly going into requiring improvement and inadequate?

“These are our people that are receiving inadequate healthcare and these nursing homes are breaking the care act constantly.”

Calling for swift action on the issue, the Prenton councillor added: “Families and people who are concerned about their relatives can put them into another care home if that’s possible, but where’s the solution to this if that’s not possible?

“Moving people from care homes creates a problem in itself for people’s health and well-being. Where’s the end destination for this, how do we solve the problem instead of commenting and talking about it?”

Numerous problems with the care system were discussed, but councillors were particularly annoyed with the treatment provided to those who most needed care.

Conservative Councillor Mary Jordan, said: “My problem is with people who are in these homes who have very complex needs and even if they were moved out of a failing home nobody wants them.

“Nobody will have them, because their home might be rated good and to have somebody in their home who’s rated as complex and difficult to look after makes them look inadequate.

“We’ve got a problem all round, right from the bottom to the very top with people with complex needs that no one wants.”

The issue of privatisation was brought up by Labour Councillor Yvonne Nolan.

Cllr Nolan said: “We’ve outsourced all of our social care into the private sector. “What we’re doing is caring for our vulnerable and older people for profit.

“Councillor Gilchrist (the Chair of the meeting) will remember the fight that went on to retain our own care homes many years ago, which ultimately was lost.

“From that point onwards that system has placed the most vulnerable people at risk.

“I do think it’s time, as we’re seeing this increase in very poor care across the country and we increasingly hear about some tragedy, some atrocity, that nationally this needs to be reviewed. We need to think seriously.”

This serious thinking involved potentially bringing social care back into the public sector.

The Rock Ferry Councillor said: “Several local authorities are now bringing care back in-house, they’re looking at the viability of doing that. Recognising the huge issues that are here.

“There are people who nobody wants, because they can’t make a profit out of them. Well I tell you what, we want them.”

Also discussed at the meeting was the £800,000 underspend of Wirral’s Better Care fund, which Cllr Christina Muspratt queried.

If the money, earmarked for supposedly invaluable improvements to the system, had been spent, the council would have been left with a £400,000 sum to pay as their share of the debt the spend would have created. Cllr Muspratt called the finding “shocking”.

Staff shortages were also discussed. Anthony Middleton, Chief Operating Officer of Wirral University Teaching Hospital, said: “There are undoubtedly staffing issues across all sectors. High vacancy rates in some key professions such as social workers. That is a real challenge for us.”

This came as a surprise to Mr Hodkinson, he said: “I am concerned to hear that there have been some pressures in terms of the social work workforce, because as far as I am aware they have not been formally escalated in any way shape or form to us as the commissioner.

“So I think if we’re not following those formal processes then I need to understand why they come out in meetings like this, as opposed to a formal process.”