Care of elderly people in England, as a whole is universally bad. Good care homes run by Social Services continue to be closed down due to inadequate funding, and private care or residential homes are expensive and the care is not necessarily good. I have worked in many nursing homes during my time as an Agency nurse in the early 90's some of them were brilliant, but many were definately not up to scratch. I think that elderly people should not have to sell their homes or delve into their life savings to pay for their own care, especially when they have worked all their lives into their late 60's as my Grandma did. Luckily she was in a good care home, I made damn sure of that. Nursing homes are inspected by local health authorities, it used to be on an annual basis, not sure if that has changed. The trouble was that they were always informed when the inspection would take place. We all know that to see a true picture of how a place functions, inspections should be done on spec.