Older care must be  freed from private profit

‘The care of older people should  primarily be the responsibility of local health and social care trusts’, the Workers Party representative in Upper Bann  has said.

Colin Craig was speaking following the closure of Glenview Private Nursing Home in Bleary, Portadown following a series of critical  inspection reports.

‘I don’t believe the closure will have come as any surprise to the residents or their families’, Colin said

‘Since Margaret Thatcher pioneered the privatisation of Nursing Homes in the 1980’s the well-being of older people has been relegated to a distant second  place behind the profit motive. It has become a commodity’, argued Colin.

‘When private care companies pull the plug  because of  falling profits or the failure to meet  standards, it is the local health and social care trusts which have to step in and provide the care’.

‘It is  incumbent on the next Assembly to urgently redress this situation by prioritising the care of our older people, by taking the entire care system back into public ownership’, Colin concluded.