‘Sad day’ as care home’s doors close

A Dundee care home will close as early as next week, when its last residents move out.

Rose House in Constitution Terrace has only two residents and arrangements have been made for them to move to other homes.

Staff at the home are to be redeployed to other care facilities within the Kennedy Care Homes group, the company which operated Rose House.

A small number of employees are expected to choose redundancy over the move to another care home.

Tom Dailey, chief executive and owner of Kennedy Care Homes, said: “It’s a very sad day for me – I’ve had the home for 14 years – and for staff and all concerned.

“It was a hard decision to take and I want to thank all current and previous staff who have put their heart and soul into the home, it’s greatly appreciated.”

Tom said that over the past 18 months there has been a series of issues with the building and it was costing a substantial amount to maintain.

He said: “We’ve spent more than £300,000 on it over the years and the limitations of the building were impacting on some of our recent care inspectorate gradings – some which I don’t particularly agree with – but those were the gradings we were given.

“Covid-19 has also impacted considerably because the home had to be closed for periods when residents or staff had symptoms, which impacted on our ability to admit people into the home.”

Rose House is registered for 23 residents, but there were only seven people living there last month when Tom made the decision to close down the facility.

He said: “We worked closely with staff and the partnership to find suitable homes for the residents and followed procedures.

“We understand that people are losing their homes, so we tried to do it as sympathetically as we can. We’re trying to redeploy as many staff as possible. There will likely be some redundancies as well, but we will redeploy as many as we can and who want to be.”

An unannounced inspection in December rated the home “weak” in all areas, warning there could be an outbreak of Covid-19 if improvements were not made.

A return visit from the Care Inspectorate on February 17 revealed that their requirements had been met and rated the home as “adequate” in all areas.

However, they advised further improvements could still be made.