The number of care homes in Dumfries and Galloway has dropped by nearly a third over the past decade.
The region’s health and social care partnership is currently consulting on intermediate care, which includes care homes and cottage hospitals.
And it has revealed there are now just 31 care homes in the region, compared to 45 in 2021.
The number of places has fallen from 1,288 to 1,062 over the same
period.
The partnership’s director of strategic planning and transformation, David Rowland, said: “We recognise the need to take a new approach to intermediate care in our region, and our engagement programme Right Care, Right Place: Intermediate Care is designed to help us do just that.
“The challenges faced by Dumfries and Galloway around care home capacity are real, and we must work together to find innovative solutions to ensure that everyone has access to the care they need, when they need it, and in the place that is right for them.
“Our Right Care, Right Place engagement programme provides lots of information to consider, including the fact that we have an increasingly older population and a shrinking working age population – and what that means for care home provision as well as intermediate care as a whole.”
Drop-in events are being held across the region as part of the review, which also looks at cottage hospital provision.
That means meetings in Kirkcudbright, Langholm, Moffat and Newton Stewart could be particularly busy as hospitals in those towns were mothballed in 2020 due to the coronavirus
pandemic.
Meetings as part of the review include: today – Castle Douglas Town Hall, 2pm to 6pm; Friday – Corner House Hotel, Annan, 2pm to 7pm; Monday – The Bridge, Dumfries, 2pm to 7pm; next Tuesday – Sanquhar Community Centre, 2pm to 7pm; March 2, Buccleuch and Queensberry Arms, Thornhill, 2pm to 7pm.
For further details and the online survey, visit www.dghscp.co.uk/rightcarerightplace
Mr Rowland added: “We’d encourage everyone to go to the website to find out more about Right Care, Right Place: Intermediate Care and either plan to attend one of our engagement sessions or look to complete the
survey.
“It will take time to capture people’s thoughts and ideas and to reflect these in the plans we develop to ensure our future services are best placed to meet the wide range of ever-changing need within our
communities.”
