Mentaur Hosts NORARCH Executive Meeting - 21st August 2015
August 21, 2015
Our CEO Isabel Santos Melo was delighted to welcome executive members of NORARCH (the Northamptonshire Association of Registered Care Homes) to our Mentaur Head Office in Northampton for a special Executive Committee meeting. Local Northamptonshire members of parliament were also in attendance at the event to discuss and share on-going issues related to the care sector.
NORARCH was first established in 1983 with the purpose for sharing information; now it is a professional body representing a diverse range of care homes in the county.
Mentaur’s CEO Isabel Melo is an executive member of NORARCH, representing specialist care providers for learning disabilities, mental health, autism, etc. for younger adults aged 18 – 65 years.
NORARCH was joined at the Mentaur office by four Northamptonshire based MP’s, including Philip Hollobone (MP for Kettering), Peter Bone (MP for Wellingborough), Chris Heaton Harris (MP for Daventry) and recently elected MP David Mackintosh (MP for Northamptonshire South).
Isabel was keen to stress some of the big issues facing the care sector; for example Mentaur welcomes the recent announcement regarding the Living Wage, but, like many local and national providers, is aware its implementation in the face of rising fixed costs and falling or static fees means that many care homes will find it more difficult to operate. NORARCH is keen to engage with local MP’s to ensure these concerns and issues reach policy makers in Westminster.
Isabel, CEO of Mentaur, commented: “Here at Mentaur we were delighted to host the Executive members of NORARCH and our local MP’s to discuss rising issues in the local and national care sector. It was wonderful to see our local MP’s engage with us and the event gave myself and the executive the platform to ensure our concerns are heard.”
John Rayner, Chair of NORARCH, said: “We were very grateful to Mentaur for hosting this most important meeting with Northamptonshire MP’s, which was both cordial and constructive. It gave us the opportunity to brief the MP’s on information they were unaware of and gave a greater understanding of problems facing the care sector so they can better represent us in parliament.”
Philip Hollobone, MP for Kettering commented: “There are more older people in Northamptonshire than ever before, and the need for care is more than ever before and the numbers are rising all the time. In Northamptonshire we are fortunate to have 130 care and nursing homes, many of them smaller, family run businesses and it is really important that we ensure that these businesses have a stable future. Care homes need to be funded properly and the burden of bureaucracy they face needs to be cut down. I am very grateful to NORARCH for briefing myself and my colleagues today in the challenges faced by the local care sector. I will ensure I do all that I can to support our local care homes. Without them, we will all be in difficulty in years to come.”
The team at Mentaur were delighted to welcome our guests to our head office and look forward to contributing to improving standards within the care sector as this crucial area of need continues to grow.
You can read more about some of the current issues facing the care industry via the links below:
http://www.carehome.co.uk/news/article.cfm/id/1569884/new-living-wage-care-homes-close-home-care-rise
http://www.autism.org.uk/news-and-events/news/care-reports.aspx
http://www.carehome.co.uk/news/article.cfm/id/1570041/government-policy-care-cap-2020