Owners of care facilities in the South West have issued a warning that many may have to close because of a lack of funding for dementia patients.
They claimed that in order to guarantee that elderly people have access to the proper care, the system needed to be overhauled.
Data obtained by the BBC revealed differences between council-funded locations throughout the region.
The government announced that it would invest up to £700 million in adult social care reform over the following two years.
Care facility owners in Devon issued a warning that they might only be able to accept privately-funded residents if they could not afford to take on residents whose fees are covered by the local council.
Newton Abbot resident and business owner Simon Spiller said: "We are finding it harder and harder to get by on the government funding. Care homes are closing, so this is a real issue that is happening right now. ".
This is not the first or the last time that the funding for dementia care has been warned to improve. However, we haven't ever directly compared South West individual council funding before.
Many councils give residents some flexibility when it comes to funding their stays in care facilities; for instance, Devon and Dorset Councils both make it clear that all the numbers they've given are minimums and that funding is individualized based on each resident's needs.
The ability of each council to raise its own money for things like social care is limited in the end and is determined by national policy. .
The real concern here is that council funding for dementia care placements in nursing homes does not match the costs that nursing homes are facing, and that nursing homes in council areas with low funding are receiving an even worse deal.
According to some care home owners, they soon won't be able to afford to accept council-funded residents, forcing families from the region's poorest areas to assume responsibility for it themselves.
In Plymouth, six care facilities recently shut their doors.
According to the BBC, a residential placement with dementia care and a nursing placement with dementia care were both underwritten by the city council at the lowest cost. .
Every nursing placement received a payment of £500 less than that given by Devon County Council.
If we only had our Plymouth nursing home," said Geoffrey Cox, managing director of Southern Healthcare, the owner of four care homes in Devon. I think it wouldn't be a very good case to put to a bank to be honest, especially if we were solely dependent on the city council and how the business would look if it were standing alone. ".
According to a spokesperson for Plymouth City Council, funding for nursing and residential care "had increased by 8.5 percent this year" and that the council works with care facilities "to adapt and develop the services to ensure they are able to meet the needs of local residents.".
Following a "cost of care" exercise the government started, council funding for care home places increased this year — at some local councils by as much as 35%. .
We are fully committed to our 10-year vision to reform adult social care, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care. We recently published our Next Steps to put People at the Heart of Care plan, which outlines how we will spend up to £700 million on adult social care reform over the next two years. ".
Mother of Ian Preston, who is a resident of a Dawlish nursing facility, said: "Mum is self-funding, so she had a certain amount of money available, and we just sold her flat so obviously that all goes into a pot.
"I wish there was another way because I feel it's a little unfair that what she has decided to do with her money won't be available when she dies, it will all be put into care," the speaker said.
The system is broken, completely destroyed, and shattered, like so many other systems, according to Mike Guy, whose wife resides in a nursing home.
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