Families of elderly patients in seven Northern Ireland care homes being axed by Britain’s biggest provider say the closure could “kill” their relatives because of the distress of a move.
They have called on the private equity investor, Guy Hands, who controls Four Seasons Health Care, to meet them face to face to see the human cost of the decision that was taken because the homes were loss-making.
At the same time, Chris Lyttle, a member of the Alliance party in the Northern Ireland assembly, is urging the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to intervene in what he believes is emblematic of a national crisis in the care sector.
He says the decision to shut the homes with just 12 weeks’ notice may be a sign that the private sector should not be involved in caring for “the most vulnerable people in our society”.
Iris Walker, whose 77-year-old husband, Jimmy, is resident in the Oakridge care home in Ballynahinch, County Down, described the decision as an “absolute outrage”. People who have have come to the end stages of their life should be treated with “dignity and care” and not faced with eviction, she said.
“Last Tuesday was a devastating day. My husband is fragile at the minute. This could kill him,” she said.
Lyttle, who is one of the few local politicians to have taken an interest in the closures, has accused Stormont’s minister of health, Simon Hamilton, of being “asleep at the wheel”. Four Seasons has said it warned local politicians and George Osborne that the sector was in difficulty, but Lyttle says Hamilton did not appear to have listened.
“Although the local impact is devastating for the 254 families and more than 400 staff, this is such an important question for society as a whole it needs to be taken up by the health secretary urgently,” said Lyttle.
Four Seasons, which is owned by Hands’ private equity firm Terra Firma, is at the forefront of a funding crisis hitting the sector. The company is losing money as fees fall and staff costs rise, but its problems are being exacerbated because it is paying more than £50m a year in interest on debts of £500m.
Four Seasons said the homes earmarked for closure are “not viable”. A spokesman said: “The fees that we are being paid are not covering the cost of care. They [the homes] are losing substantial amounts of money.”
There are fears a proposed rise in council tax announced in the autumn statement, which was designed to support care homes, will not be enough to prevent further closures.
Walker, 70, who says she is not prone to anger or bad language, is so incensed she wants Hands to leave his tax haven in Guernsey and come to talk to the families.
“I’d like that fat cat in Guernsey to get off his bottom and come and see what he has done here. But he won’t because he’s too busy with his pool, his money and his yoga,” she said, in reference to his morning workouts.
Businesswoman Jenny Grainger, who is spearheading a local campaign to save Oakridge, where her father resides, says she understands companies cannot survive operating losses but is angry that was presented as a fait accompli.
Her father has vascular dementia and took about 10 months to trust staff and his surroundings. “A move could push him over the edge. Dad’s kind of dementia is like a series of mini-strokes and stress can cause another one, that’s why we like to keep his life as stress-free as possible,” she explained.
Her feelings were echoed by staff at Oakridge. Care assistant Andy Graham said familiarity in structure and people can be vital for people at the end stages of life: “It’s heartbreaking for them. The move will kill some of them. I really do think that.
“Everybody is shocked. The residents are like a second family, you know everything about them. Some of them can’t speak, but we know their likes and dislikes just by being with them over time. It takes months to build up the trust with them. Some of them won’t even take a cup of tea if agency staff come in.
“If they have to move, they may not eat or drink and then they will go downhill,. And at their age it’s difficult to recover.”
Another Oakridge customer, Margaret Taylor, 80, also fears the impact on her husband, who has Alzheimer’s disease and has been in the home for more than four years. She lives nearby and spends as much of her day as possible with the man she says “is still the love of my life”.
“This is like an eviction,” she said of the situation facing her husband, a former Methodist church preacher.
“For that Guy Hands, at this stage, to put it bluntly, have him thrown out of his home is an outrage. I am 80, if I had to go somewhere where I can’t get transport easily, I would be desperately distressed. I just feel I need to be there with him every day.”
An immediate challenge for Walker and Taylor, and others faced with finding new homes, is the competition for places.
At Victoria Park care home in east Belfast, families are snapping up alternatives knowing that if they don’t move quickly they will lose out. “We had three families move this morning,” said one staff member. “Everybody was crying, the staff the families. It was like a living funeral.”
Hands has written to staff “to help reassure them” following “critical media coverage”, but the letter has left them baffled. He told staff the “operating performance of Four Seasons has improved each quarter this year”, and “funding for the business over both the short and medium term” was secure.
But he said no home could “continue indefinitely” when “fees are far below the cost” and that the decision to close “was taken with great reluctance and regret only after carefully exploring every other option”.
A Four Seasons spokesman said: “We understand the concern and we will do everything possible to support residents and families to transfer to a suitable alternative care setting with no disruption to their care. It may be reassuring that there is nothing to indicate that transfer would present an undue risk to residents.”
On whether Hands would be speaking to relatives of those affected, the spokesperson added: “This is entirely a matter for the Four Seasons board. The senior management team including managing director andchief operating officer have spoken to some of the relatives and are available to speak to others. Guy Hands is not a member of the board of Four Seasons and is not involved in the company’s decisions, including this closure decision, so it would not be appropriate.”
