23.10.19
Liverpool’s first council care home in 25 years to open this week
The first of two, Liverpool City Council commissioned care homes to be built in over 25 years, is opening later this week.
The city council committed to the £8m Brushwood on South Parade in Speke to meet the demands for dementia care services in the area.
The establishment is the first local authority-built care home to open in the city since the early 1990’s, and next month will see the opening of another; Millvina House in Everton.
Brushwood is home to 60 beds, 48 of which are for long term care, and the other 12 are for assessment.
Care at these centres will be provided by Shaw healthcare, a company majority-owned by employees, who have signed up to the Liverpool Social Value Charter and pay their workforce above the national living wage.
All staff who will work at these facilities have undergone specialist training in safeguarding and dementia awareness.
80% of the staff have been recruited from the local areas of Speke, Garston and Hunts Cross, with almost a quarter of them being unemployed before joining the care home.
The inaugural celebration, starting 11am on Friday 25 Oct, will see performances from the local primary school choir and a local band features two members living with dementia.
The walls of the facility are decorated with selected poems, and each wing is named after a poet including Roger McGough, who has said:
"To have a wing of a dementia hub named after oneself is a real honour and I am also pleased that my old friend Adrian Henri is also included.
“I have written several poems about dementia over the years and it is a subject that is close to my heart.”
The city council spends almost £50 million a year on residential and nursing care, plus a further £11 million on dementia and memory loss services.
Mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, said:
“We have already invested heavily in creating new social care hubs across the city in recent years, but our increasing elderly population means that we are facing a significant challenge in ensuring that there is sufficient capacity within our social care system to meet the needs of people with dementia and other long-term care needs.”
“This is against a backdrop of rising demand, significant cuts to our budget from central Government of £436 million between 2010 and 2020 and increasing pressure on wider healthcare services.”
“The decision to invest in these two new purpose-built care homes that will offer residential and nursing dementia beds and carer respite is part of our invest to save strategy and will help ease pressure on other, more costly parts of the health service such as hospital beds, and save the public purse money.”
Photo Credit: Liverpool City Council