AS three more East Lancashire nursing homes plunge into receivership, bringing the total which have hit financial trouble to five in only the past few weeks, do we glimpse a more sinister problem than just a cash crisis for their owners?

Hopefully, the official optimism, that the three homes at Pleasington, Nelson and Rawtenstall that are revealed to be in difficulty today will stay open, will be borne out.

For we have already seen what heartbreak and tragedy ensues when nursing homes have to shut.

There was great distress when 16 elderly residents were evicted from the Rowell Grange Nursing Home at Waterfoot just days before Christmas and when 13 more old folk had less than 24 hours in which to be rehoused when the St Emmanuel Home for the elderly confused at Blackburn was suddenly shut earlier this month.

Now we learn that three of those uprooted have since died.

And accusations have followed from both relatives and watchdogs that this awful upheaval played a part.

Yet, if all this is deeply distressing, our concern is that we are now witnessing a pattern that is brought about by official policy.

For what is it that is suddenly pitching one nursing home after another into financial hardship and bringing worry to dozens of sick old folk and their relatives and, in some instances, far worse?

Is this a freak trend? Is it bad management?

Or is it because nursing homes are being starved of revenue because social services officials find it cheaper to place the elderly, who are in need of such care, in the less-costly residential homes?

It is, of course, not a criterion for social services chiefs to spend public money on nursing home care purely to ensure that their owners enjoy profitable business, but the principle is - and must be - that those old people who need it should get it and not a less-adequate, though cheaper, form of care.

The charge today from the nursing home industry is that when doctors, not the budget-constrained social services departments, used to decide who should have nursing home care, many more received it than now.

The inference is that many are now being denied the proper care they need in order to save money, and that, in the spate of nursing home closures now occurring, we are seeing the knock-on effect in terms of human distress and even death.

If this is so, it is scandalous.

It must be said that the nursing home industry levelling this charge is an interest group with its own financial welfare at heart, but the disturbing rash of closures does suggest there is a case to answer - especially if this sinister syndrome is occurring elsewhere also - and that social services chiefs and the government should urgently respond.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.