CARE home owners, staff, relatives and residents have delivered a stark message to the Assembly - find more cash to fund social services placements or scores of homes will close.

Around 400 people from across Wales, including many from Gwent, staged a noisy lobby outside Assembly headquarters to highlight what the independent care sector fears is a critical situation.

They believe weekly fees paid by council social services departments for placements in independent-sector care homes are far too low to provide the high quality of care required.

"Make no mistake, many in the sector are staring over the abyss," said Shokat Babul, chief executive of Plasgeller Homes, in Brynmawr, and chairman of Care Forum Wales, the sector's umbrella body.

"What we are trying to do as an industry is get acknowledged that we as providers are entitled to a fair price for care.

"It's incumbent on us to make sure we provide a good quality of life for vulnerable people in our care, that we have the necessary skilled people and don't just recruit and retain them, but give them a decent living wage."

He said a decade of underfunding, and a big gap between the fees paid for placements in council-run homes, compared to those offered by social services for independent-sector placements, has to be addressed as it also restricts the ability to compete with wages paid in council-run homes.

Representatives from homes in Torfaen, Caerphilly and Newport county boroughs were also at the lobby, which Assembly Health Minister Jane Hutt addressed before meeting leaders of Care Forum Wales.

The forum's vice-chairman, Cheryl Wilson Carter, who also runs Millheath nursing home, in Bettws, Newport, said the turnout reflected the concern and anger on the issue. "The campaign is called Fair Price For Care, and that is all we are asking for," she said.

"Councils are making offers of fee increases that are just not enough for us to survive on." Different councils have made different fee increase offers, but all insist they can afford to pay no more.

Newport city council has offered a 5 per cent fees increase for 2003/04. Some 14 independent-sector homes in Newport are holding out for 16 per cent. Caerphilly has offered 4.5 per cent, while Blaenau Gwent has offered 2.5 per cent.

But Mario Kreft, Care Forum Wales' policy adviser, said some offers had been "derisory and a disgrace".