Care UK kick starts major expansion plan in response to growing demand for dementia care services

Company news

Dec 22, 2010

The number of people in the UK with dementia is around 750,000 people – a figure that experts believe will double over the next 30 years. This coupled with the fact that the number of people over the age of 85 is expected to more than double to 3.5 million suggests that demand for care services will grow strongly over the next few years. Care UK plans to use its considerable experience in both home care and running residential and nursing homes to develop further high quality services that meet some of this predicted demand.

The first of the new homes to be completed by Care UK will be a 74-bed scheme in the East Sussex market town of Crowborough.  Construction is progressing to plan and the scheme will be ready for residents to move in by late summer 2011. Four other new homes in Essex, Sussex, Warwickshire and Scotland are at planning stage and, if approved,  will provide high quality residential and nursing care for more than 300 older people.

Care UK’s Development Director for Residential Care, Richard Pearman said: “Many parts of the country have a shortage of care homes designed specifically to provide dementia care. We are committed to addressing this gap and have been working on both the design of our new care homes and service delivery to ensure that we are continually innovating to meet the needs of our residents”.
 
Care UK’s Managing Director of Residential Care, Helen Owens said: “These expansion plans demonstrate our long term commitment to provide the best possible environment for the care of people suffering from dementia.  47 of our 57 homes currently provide dementia care and this has given us a wealth of experience in everything from optimising the design of the buildings to recruiting and training teams with specialist skills. We’re using that experience to design an environment and a service that I believe will be the benchmark for care homes for the future.”

Care UK’s residential home development plans are expected to generate up to 4,000 new jobs over the next five years. The vast majority of these will be genuinely new jobs as the new homes that are planned are mostly not replacing existing services.

Care UK also delivers over 6 million hours of care to people in their own homes every year, supports almost 900 adults with mental health issues or learning disabilities, and is the largest independent provider of services such as elective surgery and primary care facilities to the NHS.

Picture caption: Artist’s impression of the care home which Care UK is planning to build in Warwickshire. (other locations also available – please ask)