Latest News from Everycare
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said in his Autumn Statement speech that there were “very difficult times ahead” for people and said he must delay a cap on social care costs by two years but angry care leaders are warning that care is “much more than the discharge arm of the NHS”.
From October 2023, the government had planned to introduce a new £86,000 cap on the amount anyone in England has to spend on their personal care over their lifetime, but the policy is now being pushed back to 2025.
Jeremy Hunt to use social care to ‘free up 13,500 hospital beds’
Mr Hunt said he’d “listened to extensive representations about the challenges facing the social care sector.“
“I also heard very real concerns from local authorities particularly about their ability to deliver the Dilnot reforms immediately. So I will delay the implementation of this important reform for two years, allocating the funding to allow local authorities to provide more care packages.”
To get the social care system to help free up 13,500 hospital beds “occupied by those who should be at home”, Mr Hunt announced additional grant funding for adult social care of £1 billion next year and £1.7 billion the year after.
As one in 10 older people in the UK are reducing or stopping their social care or expect to do so in the coming months, Age UK warns it will be “inevitable” some “older people will suffer” piling extra pressure on the NHS.
A new poll published by Age UK found nearly nine million people who are over 60 said they believed that cost of living increases would affect their health and care needs over the winter and 2.5 million older people are already skipping meals or expect to do so over the same time period.
The poll also shows 22 per cent (3.6 million) of older people are already reducing or stopping spending on medications or specialist foods or expect to do so in the coming months.
One patient told the charity: “Sometimes I don’t take my painkillers or eye drops because they are too expensive. I cannot afford them.”
’Care workers are the only visitors many older people receive’
Age UK says it is “alarming” over a million and a half of older people are already cutting back or stopping their social care across the UK because they can’t afford the cost. This is “potentially disastrous” for an older person with care needs as “cutting back or stopping care in this situation threatens to pile” extra pressure on the NHS and hospitals as it greatly increases the chances of serious ill health and injury.
Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK said: “Without the care they require, frail and unwell older people are more likely to fall, become malnourished and dehydrated, fail to take their medication and become seriously ill because an emerging health problem will not be noticed early enough.
For more on this tory visit the homecare.co.uk website
Queen Elizabeth II
Her Majesty The Queen.
1926-2022.
We are deeply saddened to hear of the death of Her Majesty The Queen. Our thoughts are with The Royal Family at this time.
If anyone ever questioned the extent of the crisis in social care, this past few weeks you could not escape the terrifying truth. Two reports from the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee, a report from the Levelling Up Committee, updated workforce data from Skills for Care, plus a survey of NHS Leaders published by the NHS Confederation are all raising the alarm.
The ‘ravaged’ social care sector is experiencing the greatest workforce crisis in its history and this is having a devastating impact on quality of care, NHS waiting times and patient outcomes.
We are hearing from heartbroken care workers who feel they have no choice but to find better paid work elsewhere as the job has become too overwhelming.
The independent evaluation of government policy commissioned by the Health and Social Care Committee finds that the overall response to workforce issues to date has been inadequate.
The Committee chaired by Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP urges the government to increase annual funding for social care by £7 billion a year.
The NHS Confederation insists a £10.50 minimum care worker wage is needed to address the recruitment and retention crisis. But central government remain defiant – no more money.
We know that care workers who remain in the sector are overstretched, working overtime to deliver the complex care that’s needed in their communities. The pressures existed before the pandemic, they were exacerbated at its height, and now they’re worse than ever.
One in three care workers left their job last year
The Commons report paints a picture of a dire situation – one in three care workers left their jobs last year, 95 per cent of care providers are struggling to recruit staff, three quarters of care workers are paid below the Real Living Wage. Worse still, when travel time is taken into account, many home care workers are paid below the national minimum wage.
The government proudly insist they’ve invested £1 billion extra a year in social care without providing a breakdown of how this was spent and still their colleagues in the Commons say it’s not enough.
They have allowed local authorities to raise council tax but overall cuts to their budgets have been calculated at £15 billion over the last ten years. It simply doesn’t add up to an increase. This is gaslighting on an industrial scale.
Social care is a notoriously fragmented system, but for once everyone is in agreement. Without immediate action to fill 165,000 vacancies in social care, the impact will be felt in hospitals and homes across the UK.
Eighty-five per cent of healthcare leaders agreed that the absence of a social care pathway is the primary cause of delayed discharges of medically fit patients, and the latest monthly data tells us that there are 12,400 of these healthy patients stuck in hospital on any given day.
To read the full story visit homecare.co.uk
