RECENT NEWS

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is to roll out up to 450,000 rapid Covid tests across adult care settings from next week.

The Welsh government is providing £22.7m in extra funding to help meet the additional costs incurred by adult social care providers as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Country Court Care has filed a planning application for a 70-bed care home in Raunds in Northamptonshire.

Care UK has started construction of a multi-million pound care home in Shrewsbury that will provide full-time residential, nursing and specialist dementia care for up to 80 older people.

The adult specialist care market has stood up well to the challenges presented by Covid-19, according a report by consultancy LaingBuisson.

Care providers Sunrise Senior Living and Gracewell Healthcare have signed up to the Vegetarian for Life’s Memory Care Pledge.

Leading care providers have voiced concern over the lack of available Covid-19 testing in their homes due to ongoing problems with test kits.

Luxury care provider Signature Senior Lifestyle has hired talent acquisition software provider Tribepad to help it recruit 1,000 staff across its care homes in England over the next 12 months.

The NHS should build on the closer working relationship between the health and social care sectors beyond the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

Local government should no longer be responsible for funding adult social care provision and citizens should be funded directly according to Care England, the country’s largest representative body.

England’s largest county councils have warned the government against a “knee-jerk” centralisation of social care in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Torsion Care has won permission from Bradford Council to build a 66-bed, canalside care home in Shipley in West Yorkshire.

The public accounts committee has demanded the government sets out by October how it intends to put social care on an equal footing to the NHS.

HC-One, the UK’s largest care home provider, has appointed James Tugendhat as its new chief executive officer.

Prominent campaigner and former head of the Number Ten Policy Unit Baroness Camilla Cavendish has been appointed by the government to help reform adult social care.

Construction contractor Stepnell has won a contract to build a £9.2m care home in Berkshire for Bracknell Forest Council.

Surrey developer Aspire LPP has been given the green light to build an 82-bed care home in Worthing in West Sussex.

Belgian real estate investment trust outfit Aedifica has agreed to acquire a newbuild 80-bed care home in Congleton in Cheshire for £13m.

England’s adult social care workforce will need to rise by almost a third by 2035 in line with population projections, according to Skills for Care.

The government is said to favour the introduction of mandatory social care contributions paid by people aged 40 and over, according to the Guardian newspaper.