How to Open a Care Home: A Complete Guide

Certifications Required for Running a Care Home

For those thinking about opening a care home in the UK, it’s important to understand the certifications and qualifications you need to ensure compliance with regulatory standards (e.g. CQC in England, Care Inspectorate Wales, Care Inspectorate Scotland and RQIA in Ireland). If you currently work in care, you will know that these bodies set out specific requirements and they monitor, regulate and carry out inspections to ensure that your care service is maintaining their standards of care and safety in line with the legal requirements of your country.

For example, regulators across the UK require care home owners to employ suitably qualified and experienced staff, they need the right premises to meet strict health and safety standards and they need to meet requirements surrounding the treatment and safeguarding of residents. Please note that across the UK, you need to register with the relevant regulatory authority to run a residential care home. A registered care service may operate as one of three legal entities – a sole trader, a partnership or an organisation. In all cases, one individual has to be nominated to accept the responsibility of the role.

What Qualifications Do You Need to Open a Care Home?

To run a care home, you need to be or employ a registered care home manager. If you want to be a registered manager to qualify you must have a Level 5 Diploma in Leadership for Health and Social Care. This qualification covers all of the key knowledge and skills to manage a care home effectively. It’s also recommended that your care staff have care qualifications e.g. NVQ in Health and Social Care (Levels 2 and 3).

It’s important to know that anyone can purchase a care home. If you aren’t planning to be the one in charge of the day-to-day management and running of your care home or you don’t have the qualifications to do so, then you must appoint a registered care home manager to do so. The only exception is if there are key employee transfers included with the business that you’re purchasing.

Regardless, you must be registered with the national regulator to provide care, and to register your service with the regulator you must have a registered manager in place.

Qualities Needed to Open a Care Home

Whether you plan to manage the care home or choose to hire a registered manager, there are certain qualities you need as an individual to open a care home. A care home business is often most suitable for people who have had previous experience in care or a similar area, such as medicine. People with a background in medicine have a huge set of transferable skills and experience that are essential for managing a care home, such as balancing sympathy with tough-decision making.

If you will struggle with the regulation, you should avoid opening a care home. While your care service will operate as a private business, the nature of the work will require government regulation and involvement to ensure care is of a high standard. The beds of many residents will often be fully or partially funded by local authorities, which means that can carry out random inspections and at times, dictate required standards or processes. This means you need to be patient, resilient and adaptable.

How to Set up a Care Home

Now you know about the qualifications and certifications required for running a care home, the next step is to understand the process of how to start a care home.

1.      Market Research

You should start your market research by assessing the demand for care services in your area. If there is no demand, is there anywhere nearby that would need your care home? Or would you be willing to venture out further?

Once you’ve settled on an area, you should then identify and analyse your competition. This will allow you to select the right prices for your service, determine what services you should offer and will help you find ways to help your care home to stand out from the rest.

Finally, to ensure you’re offering the right services to your area, the next step of market research should consist of understanding the needs and requirements of the local population, so you can fill in gaps of care by offering them something they want and need. 

2.      Care Home Business Plan

Creating a comprehensive business plan is essential. This should outline your vision, marketing strategy, target audience, financial projections, operational details and staff requirements. Alongside the initial business plan, you should also create a care home business continuity plan. Successful business continuity planning will reduce interruptions to your care service and protects you from minor or major service failures, or natural/manmade disasters that could disrupt your service. It will also protect the people you take care of from disruptions, as their care and support will be maintained during this time.

3.      Legal and Regulatory Considerations

As mentioned previously, you should familiarise yourself with the regulations that have been set out by the relevant regulatory body in your region. Making sure you fully understand the registration and licensing processes, the health and safety requirements and quality standards are essential for success.

4.      Secure Funding

Once you have your licensing and business plan in place, the next step is to determine the funding to open a care home, this includes knowing what you need to start up and sustain your service. Once you know how much you need, you should explore options so you can find what will work for you. Options to consider include personal savings, grants, loans or partnerships with investors. Presenting a solid financial plan and projections to potential lenders or investors will help secure the funding you need.

5.      Find a Suitable Location

When you have your funding secured, you will need to find a suitable premise that will match your budget. This location will need to meet the specific needs of your target audience while ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements regarding space, safety and cleanliness. If they don’t, you will need to calculate the costs to adhere to these standards. To improve the lives of your service users and encourage visitors to pop by, consider accessibility and proximity to amenities.

6.      Recruit and Train Staff

Once everything has been confirmed and set up, you will need to recruit and train your new employees. Start by developing job descriptions listing the qualifications, experience and qualities required for that role. The interview process can be tailored to the role and your personal preferences. Inform applicants that staff members will have to undergo appropriate background checks, e.g. Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks, to ensure the safety of residents and other members of the team. Successful applicants will go on to complete the necessary training to your standards and regulatory requirements.

7.      Set Up Systems and Procedures

The next step is to establish operational systems and procedures. These will consist of care plans, record keeping, medication management and health and safety protocols. You should also implement policies and procedures that align with regulatory requirements.

Most care homes use some level of technology to make these processes more efficient and easier to manage. To help you make the right choice, here are the top 13 considerations when choosing your care home management software.

How People Choose a Care Home

When establishing a unique selling point, you must understand how your target audience will choose a care home and what they look for. Research shows that the location of a care service is the most significant factor that people consider. This is closely followed by affordability and how the service helps its customers. During viewings, people will assess the home on its cleanliness, friendliness and sense of homeliness. These are often deciding factors once providers have been shortlisted, so consider this. Your market research will help you make the right decisions on the above.

Funding for Opening a Care Home

One of the steps to opening a care home involved securing funding. There are substantial costs associated with setting up a care home that must be considered. In addition to personal savings, there are various funding options across the UK that you can consider. These include:

• Bank Loans – You can approach banks and financial institutions to explore loan options that have been specifically designed for starting a care home business.
• Government Grants – Carrying out research into government grants that may be available to new care home owners is recommended. You can do so by contacting local authorities and relevant agencies in your region to inquire about potential funding opportunities.
• Private Investors – Seek partnerships with private investors who have an interest in the care home sector and will be willing to offer financial support.
• Crowdfunding – In areas that are desperate for care services, utilise online platforms to raise funds from the public who are interested in supporting care home initiatives.
• Social Impact Investment – Explore social impact investment funds that focus on supporting businesses with a positive social impact. You must present an in-depth and convincing business plan if you choose to seek funding. This will need to demonstrate the market demand for your service, financial projections and the unique aspects of your care home that make it worthwhile.

Problems with the Care Home Market

Understanding problems associated with the current care home market is important before you go into the business. There are specific concerns around the fair treatment of residents which can be due to homes being understaffed or hiring the wrong people, lack of funding or time.

Creating solutions to any issues you come across will help your care home stand out from your competitors. Other areas of improvement within the care sector include:

• Lack of pricing information on the website
• Poor delivery of contracts, they either come through late or aren’t shared at all
• The requirement of large deposits upfront
• No protection for residents from unrestrained fee increases
• A demand for fees to continue being paid after a resident has passed away
• Assuring residents that they won’t be asked to leave at short notice

Competitor analysis in the area and across the country will help you understand the issues potential service users face and identify opportunities to improve on what your competition has to offer.

Opening a Care Home Synopsis

As you can see, opening a care home isn’t for the faint-hearted. It requires knowledge, research, experience, patience and persistence. But with the right planning and preparation, especially when it comes to analysing competitors and market research, you can have a thriving business up and running in no time. One of the main things that will tie everything together once you’ve set up your care home is the digital platform you use to manage your service, compliance and employees. 

Implementing the Right Digital Care Home Platform

The government has set a deadline for all care services in England to become digitised by March 2024. The aim is for at least 80% of care providers to have use of a digital platform for their care records. If you are planning to open a care home, then you should avoid paper-based methods and go straight into digital care planning. There are many benefits to electronic care plans in health and social care. To name a few, these include ease of access, improved safety, reduced costs and saving space.

The right care management software is key to dealing with the problems within the care home market and making your care home business stand out from the crowd. This is why we at The Access Group have created our software for residential care. This provides support for every aspect of residential care management to help you to improve efficiency and achieve greater control. Our platform is suitable for providers of all sizes and our integrated solutions contain all of the tools you need to succeed in one system, so you can deliver joined-up person-centred care, to make a real difference to people’s lives.

We have used our 30-plus years of experience to put together the perfect digital platform that can be used by care services across the world. If you would like to learn more and give our software a try, contact us today to book a demo.