Northumbria NHS trust considering setting up own care homes

Northumbria Healthcare Trust wants to could run its own care homes to alleviate pressure on the sector

An NHS trust is considering the pioneering step of setting up its own care homes to ease pressure on its services.

Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust already provides hospital and community services and now intends to provide home care services too.

Chief executive Sir James Mackey said there was "unmet demand" for more social care services in the community.

The initiative would be a first for an NHS organisation.

The announcement comes on the day the number of people on a hospital waiting list in England hit six million for the first time.

One of the most pressing issues across the country is the availability of hospital beds, which are often occupied by elderly patients who are medically fit but cannot be placed into social care.

The situation has been worsened by the pandemic, mostly recently with the spike in cases due to the Omicron variant.

In an attempt to offset these difficulties the NHS trust, which covers Northumberland and north Tyneside, is considering creating its own care homes, although that is still some months away.

In the meantime, the trust has outlined its proposal to provide domiciliary services, which are provided to people in their own homes.

Trust chief executive Sir James Mackey says "effective social care" helps free up more hospital care

Sir James said: "Having effective social care services is vital to the entire health system, because to allow the region's hospitals to cope with the demand from new patients coming in, we need to be able to move on those patients who no longer need hospital care in order to free up beds.

"Through our new service, we can boost the system by adding further provision, ensuring that more people in need of home care can be allocated the support they need through the usual processes.

"As always, our focus will be on quality and making sure that these services are completely tailored to the needs of the people who use them, and also being first-class services to work in."

The trust believes its home care service, which should be up and running by March, could employ 250 people.

It says it will look at care home provision later in the year.