A DEVOTED Poole residential care home owner is appealing to the Government and social services chiefs to bring in urgent funding improvements before more establishments are forced to close.

Kate Hickson, 48, and husband Peter, 64, have run the Aranlaw in Tower Road, Branksome Park, for 12 years and care for 23 residents aged 78 to 99 with a staff of 19 people.

Mrs Hickson is backing the Daily Echo's campaign pressing the Government for a change in the law to give residents more security.

Currently residents can be asked to leave without notice unless their contracts specify otherwise. She says the pressures of more regulations, increased staff employment and training costs - and council payments for residents not covering their care costs - have never been worse.

Mrs Hickson revealed her business was subsidising shortfalls in some care costs because she did not have the heart to tell residents to leave.

Mrs Hickson wants the Government to pay, via local social services departments, a minimum of between £300 and £330 a week per resident compared with the current £221 to £284.

Mrs Hickson claims that regulations - including the new national minimum wage and other increased employment costs - mean care costs per person are actually £621 per week; a weekly shortfall of between £337 and £400.

"I feel very strongly for all the residents. It's personalities - elderly, frail and vulnerable people you care about," she said.

"I just could not say they had to go. I'd rather go without something myself," she added.

Mrs Hickson claims 90 per cent of Branksome Park's care homes have closed in the last two years - there now being only two - because of the pressures.

Inspected and regulated by Poole council social services, Mrs Hickson claims Aranlaw's running costs have increased by 40 per cent in two years.

And she fears they will increase again with new national care standards to be brought in by the Government between 2002 and 2007.

While agreeing with the move, Mrs Hickson wants the changes implemented over a longer time so homes can adjust - and for social services to exercise more discretion in placing residents, especially borderline cases.

"Personalities and individuals don't come into it - it's black and white. That's wrong because you're dealing with different personalities, cultures and problems," explained Mrs Hickson.

"If you're doing the job properly you're not making money, you're making a living," she added.