Closing a care home has implications for a whole community

Families and campaigners fear that closing Applethwaite Green and Grisedale Croft could mean more than the loss of two care homes – it could weaken the principle of keeping older people close to the communities they call home.

For an older person moving into residential care, a care home is rarely just a building.

It is where they wake up each morning, where staff know their routines, where they recognise the faces around them and where family members can drop in for a cup of tea. It can be the place where friendships formed over decades are maintained and where someone can remain part of the community they have always known.

That is why the future of two Westmorland and Furness Council care homes has caused such concern locally.

Applethwaite Green Care Home in Windermere and Grisedale Croft Care Home in Alston have been at the centre of a public consultation over whether they should remain open, be refurbished, rebuilt or closed.

The consultation has now closed. The next stage is already taking shape, with the council’s Health and Adults Scrutiny Committee due to consider the consultation findings on 23 September, before the council Cabinet’s final decision on 13 October.

For residents, relatives and campaigners, however the question is bigger than what happens to these two buildings:

It is about what adult social care should look like in rural communities – and whether keeping people close to their families and communities is being given enough weight.

Why are the homes under review?

Westmorland and Furness Council says both homes face significant challenges.

When the Cabinet agreed to begin the consultation in April, it pointed to buildings which it says no longer meet modern care and regulatory standards. It highlighted declining occupancy, workforce pressures and high running costs.

At Applethwaite Green, the council says there are 27 beds and 15 permanent residents. It says there are 12 alternative residential homes rated ‘Good’ by the Care Quality Commission within 16 miles.

At Grisedale Croft, the situation is different. The home has 13 bedrooms but occupancy has fallen considerably over recent years. The council says there are currently four permanent residents and that the building is more than 50 years old and has exceeded its original operational life.

The council’s argument is therefore partly financial and partly about what it considers to be suitable accommodation for the future. Its wider adult social care policy is also moving towards supporting people in their own homes and communities, rather than relying on residential care wherever possible.

On paper, that may sound entirely reasonable.

But for somebody already living in a care home, the issue is rather different.

‘Not fit for the future’ is not the same as ‘unsafe today’

One of the questions raised by those opposing closure is a simple one: what exactly does it mean when a building is described as being ‘not fit for the future of modern care’?

That wording matters.

It can sound to families as though a building is unsafe, when the council’s argument is in fact broader – involving the cost and suitability of the buildings for the future model of care.

Indeed, both homes have been described by the council as providing valued care to local people, and both have been rated ‘Good’ by the Care Quality Commission. The consultation material for Applethwaite Green says the council is proud of the quality of care provided by current and former staff; the same is said of Grisedale Croft.

That creates an understandable tension.

If the care being delivered is good, residents and relatives may naturally question why the answer has to involve moving people elsewhere.

Could the buildings be refurbished? Could they be rebuilt? Could a new council-run home be provided locally?

Those are among the options that the consultation was intended to explore.

A care home is part of a community

This is perhaps where the debate becomes more complicated than a calculation of beds, occupancy and operating costs.

Windermere and Alston are not interchangeable with larger urban areas. For an older resident in a rural community, moving a few miles can make a considerable difference.

A family member who currently visits regularly may no longer be able to do so as easily. A friend or former neighbour without a car may struggle to make the journey. Someone who has lived locally for decades can suddenly find themselves living in an unfamiliar community.

The council itself acknowledges the importance of community connection in its adult social care vision.

It says its aim is for people to live in a place they call home, surrounded by the people and things they love, and in communities where people look out for one another.

That raises an uncomfortable question: how do you protect community connection while moving someone away from that community?

It is a question that cannot easily be answered by saying that another care bed is available elsewhere.

Grisedale Croft highlights the difficulty

The situation in Alston perhaps illustrates the problem most clearly.

The council accepts that there is little alternative care provision in Alston and the surrounding area.

That is why its preferred option for Grisedale Croft is not simply closure and relocation elsewhere. Instead, it says it would prefer to provide alternative accommodation in a suitable building in the local area, if one could be acquired and if it were financially viable.

That is an important distinction.

For the council, the issue is not necessarily whether care should disappear from Alston. It is whether the care can be provided in a building that meets its expectations for the future.

For families, however, there is an obvious concern: where will that alternative building be, when will it be available, and will it genuinely provide the same sense of place?

Those questions become particularly important in a remote community where transport can already be difficult. The council’s own consultation documents acknowledge that Alston is an isolated community with limited alternative provision.

Applethwaite Green faces a different challenge

At Windermere, the council’s case is based more heavily on the availability of alternative provision.

The authority says that there are 12 CQC-rated ‘Good’ residential homes within 16 miles. But distance is not the only measure of suitability.

A resident may have chosen Applethwaite Green precisely because it allowed them to remain near family, friends and the community they know.

A replacement bed elsewhere may meet a person’s physical care needs. It does not necessarily replace the relationships and sense of belonging that come with staying in the same community.

This is why some families have questioned whether ‘alternative provision’ should be measured simply in terms of the number of available beds.

A care home can provide the same basic service on paper while providing a very different experience in practice.

The fear of a wider retreat from council-run care

There is another concern behind the campaign to save the two homes. Applethwaite Green and Grisedale Croft are not the first council-run homes in the area to face closure.

The Abbey in Staveley has already closed.

This has led some residents and campaigners to wonder whether the current consultation represents isolated decisions about two ageing buildings – or the beginning of a wider reduction in directly provided council residential care.

There is currently no evidence that Westmorland and Furness Council has announced plans to close all of its remaining care homes.

Indeed, the present consultation is specifically about the future of Applethwaite Green and Grisedale Croft. But that does not mean the concern should simply be dismissed.

Residents want to know what the long-term strategy is.

If older council buildings are progressively judged to be unsuitable for ‘modern care’, what happens to other homes built around the same period?

Will they eventually face the same assessment?

And if local authority provision reduces, will the replacement provision increasingly be provided by private operators?

These are legitimate questions for a council responsible for planning adult social care across a large and predominantly rural area.

The council says this is about listening

Westmorland and Furness Council has repeatedly stressed that the consultation does not of itself amount to a decision to close either home. When the Cabinet approved the process in April, it said all options would be considered.

For Applethwaite Green, those options included doing nothing, refurbishment, rebuilding or closure.

For Grisedale Croft, the options included doing nothing, refurbishment, demolition and rebuilding, closure without an alternative in Alston, or providing alternative accommodation locally.

The council has also said that residents and families would receive individual support and advocacy where required, with staff and trade unions involved in the process. Nikkie Phipps, the council’s Director of Care Services, has stressed during a local meeting that the consultation process is intended to listen to residents, families, staff and local communities.

That matters because the people affected are not simply users of a council service. They are people who live in these buildings.

The consultation has now closed – but the argument has not

The formal consultation ended on 19 August.

The council has since confirmed that the final decisions will now be taken by Cabinet rather than delegated to the Strategic Director of Adult Social Care.

The Health and Adults Scrutiny Committee will consider the consultation results on 23 September. The meeting will allow members of the public to participate, while the final decisions on the homes are expected at the Cabinet on 13 October.

The reports containing the consultation results are due to be made public before the scrutiny meeting.

That will be an important moment.

People will want to see not simply how many responses the council received, but what those responses actually said.

Did residents and families raise concerns about relocation?

Did they favour refurbishment or rebuilding?

Did people believe that the council properly considered the value of keeping care within local communities?

And perhaps most importantly, how will those views affect the final decision?

This is about more than bricks and mortar

There is a temptation in debates about public services to reduce everything to numbers.

How many residents?

How many beds?

How much does each place cost?

How old is the building?

How many alternative places are available?

Those figures matter. Public money has to be used responsibly and care homes have to provide safe, appropriate accommodation.

But there is another set of numbers that is much harder to put on a spreadsheet.

How many family visits will be lost? How many friendships will become harder to maintain?

How many people will feel that the community they have lived in for most of their lives has moved further away from them?

And what value should be placed on allowing an older person to spend their later years in the place they know?

These are not easy questions, but they are precisely the questions that should sit alongside the financial and regulatory ones.Westmorland and Furness Council has said that its vision is about people living in places they call home, with the people and things they love.

The decisions over Applethwaite Green and Grisedale Croft will provide a real test of what that principle means when a council believes the building providing that home is no longer suitable for the future.

For residents and their families, the hope is that ‘modern care’ does not come to mean care that is further away from the people and communities that matter most.

And for the council, the challenge will be to show that whatever decision is finally taken, the voices gathered during this consultation have genuinely influenced it.

Because ultimately, this is not simply a debate about two ageing buildings.