We need bold action on social care – starting with the Autumn Statement
Older people's charity, Independent Age, calls for the Government to use the upcoming Autumn Statement to "confront the tough choices about how to support more of us living longer lives."
In the months since taking office, Theresa May has spoken about a commitment to make the UK a country where no one gets left behind. She has talked about the good that government can do and how we need to invest in and support the institutions that make our country great.
There is no greater need to act on these principles than in the area of health and social care.
Month after month, we see record numbers of people experiencing delays and getting stuck in hospital, often because there is no care in place at home for them to return to. Hundreds of thousands of hospital bed days are lost each month. Elsewhere, both A&E attendance and emergency admittance to hospital are increasing, and ambulance response times consistently fall below the Government’s own targets. We know that older people are the group most likely to be in need of these services, but that for many of them hospital is the last place they should be – they need quality care and support to help them live well for longer in their own homes.
We cannot imagine that it is health care, or the NHS, that we solely need to concentrate on. When we are talking about the older population, the incidence of multiple long term conditions, sensory impairment and mobility issues – it is social care that is the vital safety net. A safety net which increasingly has a gaping hole in it. With 400,000 fewer people receiving local authority funded support than 5 years ago and increasing fragility in the domiciliary and care homes market, social care is under severe strain. As amply illustrated by a caller to our helpline who told us that when she’d asked the social worker how long it would be before care services were in place to allow her mother to return home from hospital, the reply she received was: ’How long is a piece of string? She’ll need someone else stopping having a carer before she can’.
Nearly a quarter of the population will be over the age of 65 in twenty years’ time and big questions are being asked about how we can sustain health and social care against this backdrop of ever increasing demand. The Health Select Committee suggestion that in fact only around half the 10bn promised to the NHS will make its way to health services is deeply concerning, as is the recent warning from the Care Quality Commission that adult social care is reaching a “tipping point”.
We have to achieve a more integrated health and care service that is sustainable for the long-term. This is not up for discussion - it is, in the end, a must-have. This means the government must take bold action. It should make a start in the Autumn Statement and provide the money care services need this coming winter to avoid the frailest getting further left behind. A start would be money to support a well-funded Care Act, protection against catastrophic care costs and a process to answer the longer term sustainability questions of both health and social care.
What is not tenable is claiming we can carry on as we are; the lines of ambulances, the heaving A & E departments and people unable to get the care they need their own homes. The signs of a health and care system in crisis are loud and clear. We need to start to confront the tough choices about how to support more of us living longer lives.
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