Residents of Scottish care homes are happier with their accommodation than those in any other part of the UK according to a survey.
The findings come as care chiefs threaten to walk away from a national contract over concerns that councils and the Scottish Govern ment are not paying them enough to maintain standards.
The Your Care Rating survey interviewed 821 residents of 43 care homes in Scotland, as well as hundreds of their relative and friends. They were asked about standards of food, cleanliness and access to health as well as their privacy and ability to make choices about activities and care - with the answers used to generate a score out of 1000.
Of those homes putting themselves forward to be assessed, Barchester Healthcare's Seaview house care home in Wick was rated the best in Scotland by residents scoring 981. Overall Scottish homes averaged a score of 897, well ahead of the UK average of 880.
Alex Wilson, north division director at Barchester Healthcare said "we strive to ensure that all of our homes provide care which is highly rated by residents and their relatives."
Douglas Quinn, chairman of the not for profit firm behind the survey Your Care Rating, said "This is our fifth annual survey. For the 2016 Your Care Rating survey we included the views of almost 11,000 family members and friends as well as the residents to give a more rounded view. Most care homes in our survey are doing a very good job, but there is no room for complacency."
He acknowledged that not all homes had been covered by the survey, because they had not come forward. "whatever score a care home receive, we should applaud it for taking part, because that publicly demonstrates their transparency and commitment while offering them an insight into where they can still improve."
The results came as an investigation for the BBC found found care homes in nearly 100 council areas in England had handed care home contracts back to local councils as underfunding had stopped them being viable.
Dr Donald MacAskill, chief executive of umbrella body Scottish Care said he was not surprised by the finding and companies in Scotland had had to do the same . "We know a good number of our providers have handed back work as what they have been offered by the local authorities and integrated joint boards simply could not enable them to deliver dignified safe and adequate care. They would rather lose the work than drive standards even lower.
"We are still in Scotland dominated by a political culture which tries to get the most amount of care for the cheapest price. This is a shameful way for the care of our vulnerable older people to be delivered. We have to find a better way."
He said Scottish Care's own surveys showed one in five care home providers were not confident about still being in business this time next year. "We cannot allow this crisis to grow," he added.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here