Revealed: Low Income Counties Have Best Levels Of Adult Social Care
- Leading independent care provider Caring Homes has launched an interactive infographic identifying the best and worst counties in England for quality of care
- Reveals that the least affluent areas in England are providing the highest levels of care
Leading care provider Caring Homes has launched an interactive tool which ranks each English county on the quality of residential adult social care it provides. The research correlates statistics from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) with ONS income and life expectancy data for the first time. It reveals that Shropshire scores the highest for quality of care, with 94% of care homes meeting CQC standards whereas Nottinghamshire scores the lowest, with just 64%.
Interestingly, the data also revealed that generally, better care homes are found in low income counties and there is no indication of a relationship between quality of care and the average life expectancy. For example, Dorset has the highest average life expectancy – 85.3 years for females – but ranks only 42nd for care. To ensure the infographic remains accurate and up-to-date, the county level data will be updated every six months on an ongoing basis.
Caring Homes, which runs 65 care homes in 25 UK counties, produced the infographic with the intention of empowering the public to make care-based choices with a clearer understanding about the quality of care in their area. The care provider also hopes the tool will help care professionals to start making data-led decisions about improving the quality of care.
Emma Charlton, Caring Homes’ Marketing Director says;
“One of the most important decisions in life is choosing the right care home, whether for yourself or for a loved one. There is a huge amount of information available to help people make this decision, but in the past it hasn’t always been easy to find or understand.
“At Caring Homes we are committed to helping people make the right decisions about care. Helping them to access clear information to base those decisions upon is a vital part of that process. Our new infographic will help people who are looking for good care. It will also help care providers, commissioners and regulators to see where standards are high, and even more importantly, where they need to target their resources to improve care. Caring Homes is passionate about using new technology to improve care standards and make the sector more open and transparent. This new infographic is a perfect example of our commitment.”
Caring Homes is one of the largest and most respected independent providers of care in the England. Established in 1994, the company has achieved CQC ISO 9000:2001 accreditation across the whole company, and uniquely holds the Hospitality Assured Standard – usually awarded for service and business excellence in the hotel industry.
The maps were created by mapping CQC and ONS data according to geocodes taken from cloud-based mapping tool CartoDB. The maps can be viewed by visiting http://www.caringhomes.org/quality-of-care/.