The call comes just when you thought it was sorted
Finding the home was the hard part. Then the phone rings: your mother or father has deteriorated, the home says it can no longer meet their needs, and you need to find somewhere else.
It is one of the hardest moments families face, because it arrives once everyone has relaxed, and because it concerns someone who is now frailer than before — so a move costs them more than the first one did. It is worth knowing that there are real protections here, and that not everything sits with the home.
Why homes give notice
In the great majority of cases there is no bad faith. A home is registered for particular kinds of care and staffed accordingly:
- New clinical needs appear — continuous oxygen, PEG feeding, complex wound care, a tracheostomy — that require different staff and different registration;
- Behaviour that carries risk to the resident or to others, in a home without the right unit or training;
- Fees unpaid over a defined period;
- the home is closing or changing ownership.
The practical consequence matters: arguing about whether the home wants to keep your relative almost never helps. The useful conversation is a different one — about how the move happens and what you are owed while it does.
Start with the contract, not the phone call
The residency agreement is where your real timescale lives. Notice periods of around 28 days are common, but yours is whatever your contract says, so read it before you agree to anything.
Two things are worth insisting on straight away:
- The reasons in writing. "Needs have increased" is not enough. Ask which specific care task the home cannot deliver. That sentence decides what kind of home you now need to look for, and it is also what any later challenge would turn on.
- Confirmation of the notice period and the date it runs from. A verbal warning is not the same as formal notice.
The route almost nobody uses
This is the part families miss, and it is the strongest card in the hand.
You can ask the local authority for a fresh needs assessment — and, importantly, you can do this even if your relative is a self-funder. Many families assume the council is only for people who cannot pay. It is not: the assessment is about needs, and it is the gateway to everything else.
It matters for three reasons:
- it produces an independent, written statement of need, which is exactly what the next home will want to see;
- where needs are eligible, the council has duties to help arrange suitable care — you are no longer doing the search alone;
- savings that have been spent down on fees may now bring your relative within the means test, which changes who pays. Families often cross that line without noticing.
Alongside it, if the needs are substantially health needs, ask for an NHS Continuing Healthcare checklist. It is a screening step, it can be requested, and where it leads to full funding it changes the financial picture completely.
What else to ask the home for
- A full care summary: current care plan, medication chart, diagnoses, risk assessments, wound records, recent GP and specialist letters. This is the document the next home decides on — ask for it in writing, and check it is complete. A thin summary adds weeks to the search, because no home assesses a case blind.
- Help with the move itself, not just the date by which you must be gone.
- The social worker involved, if there is one already, or a referral if there is not.
If the home will not engage
There is a proper order to this, and following it works better than escalating straight to the top:
- Use the home's own complaints procedure first, in writing. Most contracts require it and most disputes end here.
- If the placement is arranged or funded by the council, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman can look at it once the complaint has been through the provider.
- If your relative is self-funding, independent adjudication may be available where the provider subscribes to a scheme such as ISCAS.
- Tell the regulator if you have concerns about the quality or safety of care — the Care Quality Commission in England, the Care Inspectorate in Scotland, Care Inspectorate Wales, or RQIA in Northern Ireland. Regulators do not settle individual disputes or get a place back, but they do act on patterns, and reporting matters.
If the home is closing
The same principle applies: residents are not left without a solution, and the council has duties around continuity of care. Timescales are usually longer than for a single notice — but the practical advice runs against instinct. Do not wait for the collective solution. Families who also search on their own account get to choose; families who wait take what is left.
How to run the search this time
The common mistake is to reach for the list you used before. But the person is not who they were then: the criterion now is the current level of need, not the one they moved in with.
- Start from the written reason for the notice — that is your filter.
- If a specialist unit or particular nursing skills are needed, approach only homes that have them. General homes will say no and cost you weeks.
- Contact many homes at once, attaching the care summary. With a complex picture this is the only way to get answers in days rather than months.
- Before signing anywhere new, ask what level of need they can care for and what happens if your relative deteriorates further. That question is what stops this happening a second time.
The practical point
This does not get solved by persuading the home to make an exception. It gets solved by insisting the move happens properly — written reasons, the contractual notice, a full care summary — while searching in parallel against the updated criterion, with a council assessment running alongside.
If you have to rebuild a shortlist inside a short notice period, Curalune Care Help gives you the starting point: 3–5 homes that match the current situation within 24 working hours, with contact details, links and a ready-to-send message you can put to all of them at once. £69 one-off. If you don't receive at least 3 homes matching the area and criteria you gave us, we refund you in full. Start here
Notice periods and grounds for ending a placement are set by your residency agreement, and the rules, regulators and complaint routes differ across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Check your signed contract and the bodies that apply where you live. This article is general information, not legal advice and not clinical guidance: if you believe a notice is unlawful, or fees are being disputed, take advice from a solicitor or an advice service such as Citizens Advice or Age UK. Curalune does not allocate places and cannot guarantee availability.
