One of the ways in which the government has sought to hide the dreadully low effectiveness of the extra money it has put into the NHS has been by cutting back on services which are not in the public eye.
Great effort has been put into cutting waiting lists. Plenty of money has been put into hiring staff, especially managers but also doctors and nurses. But the money has not reached many other service which are less in the public eye but extremely important. One of the major ones is care for the elderly.
This is from yesterday's Sunday Telegraph:
Hundreds of thousands of elderly people have had their "social care" cut in the past decade.
Seven in 10 councils in England have been forced to "ration" services since Labour came to power, according to the Local Government -Association.Most town halls now provide services - including meals-on-wheels, trips to day centres and home visits from social workers - only to pensioners with "substantial" or "critical" needs.
and later,
Although council spending on care for the aged has risen 65 per cent since 1997, central government grants have increased only 14 per cent. In a foreword to the document, Lord Bruce-Lockhart, chairman of the LGA, says: "[To receive care] people have to wait until their life is threatened, they have serious physical or mental illness, or they are unable to carry out the majority of domestic routines."
Full article here.
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in NHS
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Hundreds of thousands of elderly people have had their "social care" cut in the past decade.
Seven in 10 councils in England have been forced to "ration" services . . .
In theory we're moving towards integrated healthcare with NHS and Social Services staff and budgets pooled/working together. Integrated teams or seemless services and all that malarky.
At present (in our locality) Social Services are very much their own empire and won't merge with the NHS. Loss of star ratings all round, here.
Consultant colleagues tell me this is the case in many regions.
Since NHS funding is therefore stuck in the NHS, the extra cash we've received can't go in to councils to support social care. A subtle point, but just the way councils can't snaffle NHS cash to improve roads or public transport (and then justify this as reducing isolation in the elderly or whatever) our council can't readily snaffle NHS cash for social care. Local PCTs have been sympathetic and given a dowry for a handful of named patients.
My point : the mismatch of capacity and demand within provision of social care for the elderly often is not within the gift of central government to address if local councils resist change/reconfiguartion and consequent financial flexibility.
Posted by: The Shrink at May 17, 2007 09:44 AM