What Is a Nursing Care Home?

There are many terms and definitions used in relation to social care, including ‘care home, ‘residential home’ and ‘nursing home’. Generally speaking, ‘Care Home’ is the umbrella term and refers to residences which may provide accomodation along with personal or nursing care.

There can be many types of care home, but the main two are known as Residential care home and Nursing care home.

A care home providing nursing care (formerly known as a Nursing home) goes one step further than residential care homes with the degree of care provided.  It will provide accomodation and personal care but also provides qualified nursing for persons suffering from sickness, injury or infirmity – in fact by law, nursing homes have to have a qualified nurse on duty 24 hours a day.  Nursing care homes tend to be more expensive due to the additional cost of nursing care.

Some care homes (especially ones for elderly people) have beds registered as residential care and other beds registered as nursing care.  This is ideal for those elderly who enter a care home with their spouse but need different levels of care.  Equally, many choose these homes to avoid having to change homes if their needs change from residential to nursing.

Care homes can be run by private companies (individuals or larger groups), charities or local authorities.  Whoever owns them, all care homes should be registered and monitored by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
 

Mark Sadler