Health and Social Care Committee

Consultation on terms of reference for inquiry into residential care for older people

RC24 ToR – David and Hilda Smith

Committee Clerk,

Health and Social Care Committee,

National Assembly for Wales,

Cardiff Bay,

CF99 1NA

13^th October 2011

Dear Ms Dafydd,

Inquiry into Residential Care for Older People

Herewith our comments on the Committee’s draft terms of reference, which concern your last two paragraphs:

(5) Tenant ownership and control issues. May we suggest you amend the bullet point to include tenant ownership and control issues? A possible form of words could be: “New and emerging models of care, including those that incorporate mutual and co-operative values and principles in their governance structures”.  This would ensure that resident are able to own and manage the homes that they live in. You may also wish to make a connection between residential provision and home care, eg, offering maintenance, assistance to the person and health care.

(6) Management. On line two, after ‘funding’ insert ‘management’. Not only funding and ownership, but also management is important to open the door to the notion of multi-stakeholders co-operatives (empowerment of diverse stakeholders, users, employees, other support) and the concept of public / co-op partnership. We intend pointing to a few successful examples in terms of: residency for older people offering a continuum of services depending of the degree of autonomy enjoyed by the service user, bearing in mind the fact that co-operatives will use their surplus in order to improve services NOT to benefit shareholders.

In UN Year of Co-operatives 2012, it would be helpful if the Committee could signal its willingness to invite and consider excellent relevant international evidence. We hope the Inquiry can use relevant material, which can be found at

SPRU (http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/spru/) and PSSRU (http://www.pssru.ac.uk/), as they do a fair bit of modelling work in these areas so their websites might prove useful.

We are sure Committee members are aware that the terms ‘co-operative’ and ‘mutual’ are not the same, and be alert to the fact that the Co-operative Movement is independent of, and not just an adjunct to government aims and ambitions.

Yours sincerely,

David and Hilda Smith

Welsh Progressive Co-operators

Inquiry into Residential Care for Older People

 Suggested terms of reference

To examine the provision of residential care in Wales and the ways in which it can meet the current and future needs of older people, including:

-          the process by which older people enter residential care and the availability and accessibility of alternative services 

-          the capacity of the residential care sector to meet the demand for services from older people in terms of staffing resources and the number of places and facilities.

-          the quality of residential care services and the experiences of service users and their families; the effectiveness of services at meeting the diversity of need amongst older people; and the management of care home closures. 

-          the effectiveness of the regulation and inspection arrangements for residential care, including the scope for increased scrutiny of service providers’ financial viability.

-        5.   new and emerging models of care provision

-         6.  the balance of public and independent sector provision, and alternative funding and ownership models, such as those offered by the cooperative and mutual sector