Care Homes (Hansard, 24 July 2002)

§ Mr. Burstow
To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many local authority(a) residential homes, (b) nursing homes and (c) dual registered homes have been voluntarily deregistered in each (i) local authority and (ii) region in each of the last five years. [45639]
1402W

§ Jacqui Smith
[holding answer 26 March 2002]: The information centrally available on establishment closures will be placed in the Library. It is not possible to distinguish voluntary deregistrations from these statistics.

§ Mr. Andrew Turner
To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many single bed care homes there are in(a) England and (b) each local authority. [68445]

§ Jacqui Smith
Information on the number of care homes with only one bed is not collected centrally.

§ Mr. Swayne
To ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate he has made of the availability of qualified staff before implementing Regulation 19(5)(b) in respect of care homes. [70315]

§ Jacqui Smith
Regulation 19(5)(b) requires that care home staff have qualifications suitable to the work they are to perform. and the skills and experience necessary for such work. The regulation does not specify the types and levels of qualifications which may be required, this depend on the type of care home and the needs of the residents. The regulations were extensively consulted on and the Department has no evidence to suggest that large numbers of care homes will be unable to meet this requirement.
To support training, a new fund—the training strategy implementation fund—was set up in April 2001. It is available to all social care employers—whether they are in the voluntary, private or statutory sectors. There was £2 million in this fund for 2001–02 and this has been used to support and embed induction standards in the social care field. The amount available within this fund has increased to £15 million for 2002–03. On 23 July this year my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health announced that the national training strategy implementation fund will rise to £70 million by 2006.