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The future of large swathes of home care provision for elderly and disabled people hung in the balance in December as major provider Allied Healthcare, which employs 8,000 workers and has contracts with 84 local authorities, fought to stay solvent.
The troubled company, which mushroomed from a one-branch operation in Staffordshire to national prominence, has now sold its entire homecare operation to CRG – whose services in Hammersmith, Hackney, Leicestershire and Rotherham were rated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in December as requiring improvement, while its Stockton service is deemed “inadequate”.
Following the collapse of various companies that seek to make profit out of the provision of essential care for the elderly, the CQC issued a formal notice in November saying that Allied Healthcare had failed to assure the CQC that it had the funds to continue.
The regulator noted that it has a legal duty to warn local authorities that in its view, business failure was likely and services could be affected. Allied Healthcare said the move was “premature and unwarranted”.
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