Care home for adults with learning difficulties gave families 10 HOURS notice ...

Care home for adults with learning difficulties gave families 10 HOURS notice ...
Care home for adults with learning difficulties gave families 10 HOURS notice ...

Families of care home residents were given just 10 hours' notice of its final closure - a move they called 'inhumane'. 

Berkeley House in Kent, which looked after adults with severe learning difficulties and autism, decided it did not have enough staff to provide sufficient care and told families at 7.30am that their loved ones would have to leave at 5pm that same day. 

Four days earlier operator Achieve Together had said the closure would happen after 28 days. 

Berkeley House in Kent, which looked after adults with severe learning difficulties and autism, told families at 7.30am that their loved ones would have to leave at 5pm that same day

Berkeley House in Kent, which looked after adults with severe learning difficulties and autism, told families at 7.30am that their loved ones would have to leave at 5pm that same day

The company told the Guardian it had decided to close the home 'due to our inability to recruit and retain staff we were unable to continue to provide a good standard of care'. 

It added that following an inspection the Care Quality Commission and the local council 'determined that people's needs would be better met in alternative provision'. 

Yola and Graham Wakefield, whose son, 29, has autism and had lived at Berkeley House for a decade, said Achieve Together's actions had left him 'traumatised and devastated'. 

'Our son had to be sedated so that we could remove him from the home he had known for 10 years,' they said.

'We had no time to arrange the removal of his larger personal belongings and so all that was familiar to him had to be left behind. What he experienced was inhumane.' 

There are thought to be more than 100,000 vacancies for social care staff in England, while recent figures revealed more than 40,000 workers quit between April and October. 

Half of English councils said they have seen care homes going bankrupt or closing in the last six month. 

At the start of the month ministers announced a £500million initiative to employ more staff in the sector. 

The white paper, called 'People at the heart of care', will also

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