The Managing Director of a Scarborough Care Home hopes the documentary it featured in last night provokes the government into action.
Mike Padgham has invited the Secretary of State for Health to Scarborough to discuss better funding for the care industry.
St Cecilia's Care Home features in BBC2 documentary "Inside The Care Crisis- with Ed Balls". The first episode aired last night and showed the former Labour MP visiting St Cecilia's during the summer.
Mike hopes the two-part BBC programme better informs people about the nature of care in this country.
Last nights programme showed the care industry warts and all and Mike Padgham says that was the intention of the documentary.
Mike says nothing was off limits and he hopes people and politicians saw the true picture of the care industry in this country.
Recently Ed Balls watched his mother, who has dementia, move into a care home. She entered a system in crisis, a crisis which has only been deepened by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Now the economist and former politician is taking an immersive journey into the elderly care sector, to explore what’s gone wrong and what could help put it right.
Ed Balls says:
"The crisis in social care is deepening, and we need to work together to sort it now. Because my mum has dementia and lives in a care home I thought I knew what happened in them; but as I started to dig deeper into the realities of the issues that care workers face daily, I realised I've only ever scratched the surface."Covid exposed and accelerated a long-term decline in this country's provision for adult social care, but it’s also given us a chance to do something about it. It’s for our parents now and our children’s futures that we must take this chance to understand more about what's needed and do something before it’s all too late."
Colin Barr, Executive Producer, says:
“There couldn’t be a more pressing time to examine the crisis in elderly care, and there couldn’t be a better person to do it with than Ed. His willingness to immerse fully and explore with empathy, is what makes him unique. I know this subject is particularly close to his heart and he’ll pour everything into understanding the challenges facing staff, residents and families, as we emerge from Covid.”
Living and working alongside the staff and residents, Ed will get a taste of the challenges they face, including hearing heart-rending stories of the devastation wreaked by Covid.
He’ll meet families from all walks of life who’ll share their experiences of their sacrifices and struggles in dealing with a relative or parent in care. And he’ll travel beyond Yorkshire to see how individual care homes and councils have responded to the crisis in innovative ways.
Armed with his findings, Ed will sit down with those in power - in local government and Whitehall - to discuss what he’s seen and explore possible reforms to incredibly complex problems.
The first episode is available on BBC iPlayer. There is more information about the programme here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0011gny
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