Few individuals outside of Lochaber know the story of Moss Park. A 39-bed care home in Fort William, it is a lifeline for the patients it looks after. Last year, all the residents of Moss Park were faced with having to relocate over forty miles away, as the home faced closure.
Fortunately for the residents and their families, this decision was overturned thanks to community campaigning. Now Moss Park is run by NHS Highland, but the threat of relocation still looms over patients, as homes continue to battle against staffing issues.
Not everyone is so lucky. A similar story took place in Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis, as the same private care company, HC-One, shut down its Blair Buidhe home. This time, campaigning wasn’t enough and the residents were forced to transfer to another facility.
It is a well-established fact that care homes across Scotland are facing a staffing crisis and financial pressures at levels never seen before. Yet for patients, nothing is changing. This is particularly true for those in rural areas, as the suffering they are experiencing as a result has no outlet.
From 2023 to 2024, there were over a thousand care homes in Scotland supporting just under 50,000 patients. Yet despite the care sector’s size and necessity, it remains to be one of the most rapidly depleting services.
As the industry has been strangled by staff shortages, its recruiting standards have dropped significantly, leading to insidious incidents of abuse and mistreatment of patients by poorly trained carers, with insufficient background checks.
Earlier last year, Janette Ritchie, a patient with dementia at care home “Barrogil House” in Fife, suffered abuse at the hands of several members of staff who neglected her, leaving her to lie in her own urine overnight and handling her roughly. This was secretly recorded by her daughter, who then passed the footage over to the scrutiny body Care Inspectorate, resulting in the dismissal of five staff members at the home.
This year, in Glasgow’s Springvale care home, similar incidents took place which resulted in one staff member being arrested and another four suspended from their roles.
It’s an undeniable fact that the quality of care is declining and access to it, shrinking at a rate that is unsustainable and frankly, dangerous.
Scotland first officially noted itself as being an aging population in 2010, in a demographics report. Over a decade later and it seems policy has not caught on to the simple fact that as the birth rate drops, the demand for beds in care homes will continue to steadily increase. There appears to be no end in sight to this issue.
Dr Donald Macaskill, the Chief Executive of Scottish Care, said: “Scottish Care’s research demonstrates the profound social injustice of how our crisis-driven care home sector operates. People are desperate to move into care homes across Scotland, not least those stuck in our hospitals, and yet local authorities are choosing or simply do not have the money to pay for their care and support. Because of this underfunding, care homes across Scotland are in crisis, and empty beds will lead to care home closures.”
The burning question that remains to be answered is, when these facilities close, where will the residents go?
For residents in the Highlands living this reality, a twenty-minute trip down the road to an alternative place of care isn’t an option for them. Many of these patients have dementia and other memory-related medical complications; removing them from their environment will likely only worsen their condition. Relocation also isolates them further from their families, who will have to travel more and therefore spend more to reach their relatives during visits.
Even if alternative facilities were available, they’d likely already be overwhelmed, with no beds left, which means residents would be left in the hands of NHS Highland, as Moss Park does, which, as it stands, is buckling under demand.
In Sutherland, under NHS Highland, vulnerable patients were put at risk of harm and often neglected, according to the watchdog Care Inspectorate’s report on the area. It cited “critical failings in leadership” as a key reason for the problems, judging all areas of the service as either unsatisfactory or weak.
This is happening amid a growing “mental health crisis” hitting nurses and midwives in the area, as over 40,000 staff days were lost in the last five years to this issue, in line with the national figure of over a million lost working days.
More than five million bed days have been lost to delayed discharge since 2015, costing almost £1.5 billion, according to recent reporting by charity Scottish Care.
Without the ability to rely on private care services or public care services, where are these patients supposed to turn to?
There is no answer to be found, and though campaign groups in the highlands are battling to keep doors open, they cannot continue forever. This problem is only set to grow exponentially.
Right now, Scotland has no answer. With every full bed and every home closure, the silence on this issue grows louder, and the people who need care most are being forgotten.
