NORTH Ceredigion Forum for Older People’s Care has called for a “new vision” for county care homes after the closure of Abermad.

At a meeting last week, members called for a new policy direction from Ceredigion County Council with regard to residential care, and closer collaboration and joint working with the Hywel Dda University Health Board in the provision of residential nursing beds.

Forum chair Mark Williams, former Ceredigion MP said: “We have been told in the past that the NHS can commission nursing beds in the residential care sector, and yet we know that the private sector in this county has contracted recently with the very sad closure of Abermad, and of course historically Bodlondeb.”

The Forum said that Abermad’s closure, the loss of Bodlondeb, the continued wait for the Cylch Caron project in Tregaron, the failure to deliver a promised dedicated Dementia facility in the north of the County, and the failure to include a specific dementia unit in Maes y Mor, “means that inevitably the Forum contends, more local residents, who need residential, and residential nursery care, will inevitably be forced to access it out of county.”

“Our Forum has always argued that many people do respond well to adequate care services being delivered in their own homes, but for many that cannot work. “We call for a new ‘Ceredigion Vision’ in which the needs for all are catered for, not on the basis of crisis management, but a longer term strategy that caters for all.”