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Found 162 results
  1. News Article
    Increasing numbers of emotionally troubled children have been taken into care while waiting long periods for NHS treatment because their condition deteriorated to the point where their parents could no longer cope with their behaviour, child protection bosses have revealed. Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) president Steve Crocker said that since the pandemic, youngsters with complex emotional needs had become a significant factor in rising child protection referrals. “We are seeing children in the social care system because they have not been supported in the [NHS] mental health system,” he said. Crocker urged ministers to “do better” for children facing “unacceptable” delays in NHS mental health treatment, adding that it was not uncommon for waiting lists to involve waits of over a year. Councils were “filling gaps” in NHS provision but struggling to find placements for children with severe behavioural problems, and when they did, typically paid “untenable” fees of tens of thousands of pounds a week. He accused private children’s residential care providers and their “rapacious” hedge fund backers of “profiteering” from the care crisis, and urged the government to intervene to cap typical profit margins that were currently about 20%. “We do not see how this can be allowed to continue,” he said. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 13 December 2022
  2. News Article
    Health ministers are to recruit a new volunteer army for social care to ferry medical equipment and drugs to people’s homes in a bid to free up congested hospital wards. Under the plan, members of the public will be able to sign up on the GoodSam app for roles such as “check in and chat”, which involves support over the phone for people struggling with loneliness. There will also be the chance to “pick up and deliver”, helping to transport medicines or small items of medical equipment to people’s homes from NHS sites so they can be discharged from hospital, and “community response” roles will involve collecting and delivering shopping and prescriptions. The joint NHS and social care volunteers responders programme for England is being launched on Wednesday amid a social care staffing crisis with 165,000 vacancies and millions of hours of care needs not being met. At the end of April, 49,000 people every day had to stay in NHS hospitals in England despite no longer meeting the criteria to be there. News of the planned announcement from the care minister, Helen Whately, has sparked concern among workers in the sector, who warned that volunteering could not solve the social care recruitment and retention crisis. Helen Wildbore, director of Care Rights UK, which represents relatives and residents, said it “feels like a desperate measure to try and save a system that is crumbling”. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 6 June 2023
  3. News Article
    Knocking on doors to check on people's health and catch problems before they escalate is common practice across Brazil. But could that approach work in the UK? Comfort and Nahima are two out of four door-knockers on round Churchill Gardens, a council estate in the Pimlico neighbourhood of London, visiting residents as part of a proactive community healthcare pilot. They can help with anything from housing issues which impact health, such as overcrowding, or pick up the early signs of diabetes by chatting informally to residents about their lifestyle. These community health workers are partly funded by the local authority and partly by the NHS so they can co-ordinate between the local GP surgery and other social services. Local GP Dr Connie Junghans-Minton says the proactive approach had led to fewer requests for appointments The National Institute for Health Research helped crunch the data from the pilot. Households which had been visited regularly were 47% more likely to have received immunisations and 82% more likely to have taken up cancer screening, compared to other areas. The idea to import this model to the UK came from Dr Matthew Harris, a public health expert at Imperial College London who worked as a GP in Brazil for four years. There, community health workers have been credited with achieving a drop of 34% in cardiovascular deaths. "In Brazil they have scaled this role to such degree that they have 270,000 community health workers across the whole country, each of which looks after 150 households, visiting them at least once a month," Dr Harris said. "They've seen extraordinary outcomes in terms of population health in the last two or three decades. We think we've got a lot to learn from that." Read full story Source: BBC News, 9 May 2023
  4. News Article
    The Government’s “blanket erasure” of older people with learning disabilities is leaving a growing population unsupported and piling further pressure on family carers, new research will warn. Byline Times has seen early findings from a forthcoming national study which outlines the urgent need to avoid a crisis by creating a government strategy for this unacknowledged community. With around 1.5 million people with learning disabilities in the UK, Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU)’s ‘Growing Older Planning Ahead‘ research lays bare the Government’s short-sighted approach to learning disability support. The study estimates around 81,000 over-50s within this population in England alone, many of whom are not in contact with services. In addition, figures show that between 2012 and 2030 in England, the number of learning disabled people needing social care will have increased by almost 70% (from more than 140,000 to 235,000). Sara Ryan, MMU Professor of Social Care who led the three-year project, said: “Ageing opens up all sorts of different things, you turn down the dial on some things and up on others. If you’re lucky enough, you have a lot to look forward to – but for people with learning disabilities, there’s a blanket erasure of age.” Read full story Source: Byline Times, 3 May 2023
  5. News Article
    A care home manager said it had become an "impossibility" to get NHS dentists to visit her elderly residents when they needed treatment. Liz Wynn, of Southminster Residential Home, near Maldon in Essex, said she had battled for years for site visits. It comes as a health watchdog revealed that 25% of care home providers said their patients were denied dental care. NHS Mid and South Essex said it was considering a number of approaches to improve access for housebound patients. Ms Wynn said the shortage of NHS community dentists available to come into the home to carry out check-ups and treatment had been an "on-going concern" for almost 10 years. Ms Wynn said the home relied on its oral care home procedures - such as checking residents' mouths daily - to prevent problems from escalating. However, she said while its residents were "our family", conditions such as dementia made it difficult to spot when patients were in pain. She also said poor dental hygiene in the elderly could result in a number of potentially life-threatening infections. Read full story Source: BBC News, 24 April 2023
  6. News Article
    Trust in care homes has slumped, leaving half of the British public lacking confidence that friends or family would be well looked after. Nationwide polling for the Guardian revealed 9 out of 10 older people believe there are not enough care staff, and half have lost confidence in the standard of care homes since the start of the pandemic. The survey conducted by Ipsos this month follows a doubling in public dissatisfaction in the NHS and exposes deepening fears about the fitness of a social care sector that had its weaknesses exposed by Covid-19, which claimed 36,000 lives in care homes in England alone. The Relatives and Residents Association (RRA) said the polling tallied with calls to its helpline about the “harm and anguish caused by poor care and frustration at the inconsistency in standards”. “We must weed out the poor providers and invest in skills – care workers must become our most valued workers, not the least,” said Helen Wildbore, the RRA’s chief executive. “Tomorrow, any one of us could need them.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 24 April 2023
  7. News Article
    Staff in hospital emergency departments in England are struggling to spot when infants are being physically abused by their parents, raising the risk of further harm, an investigation has found. Clinicians often do not know what to do if they are concerned that a child’s injuries are not accidental because there is no guidance, according to a report from the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) that identifies several barriers to child safeguarding in emergency departments. Matt Mansbridge, a national investigator, said the report drew on case studies of three children who were abused by their parents, which he said were a “hard read” and a “stark reminder” of the importance of diagnosing non-accidental injuries quickly, since these are the warning sign in nearly a third of child protection cases for infants under the age of one. “For staff, these situations are fraught with complexity and exacerbated by the extreme pressure currently felt in emergency departments across the country,” Mansbridge said. He said the clinicians interviewed wanted to “see improvement and feel empowered” to ask difficult questions. “The evidence from our investigation echoes what staff and national leads told us – that emergency department staff should have access to all the relevant information about the child, their history and their level of risk, and that safeguarding support needs to be consistent and timely/ Gaps in information and long waits for advice will only create further barriers to care,” he said. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 13 April 2023
  8. News Article
    A former nursing home manager has been fined £40,000 after pleading guilty to two offences of failing to provide safe care and treatment to two residents at Rossendale Nursing Home in Lancashire. Caroline Taylforth, who established her first residential care home in 1997, was prosecuted by the CQC. She was the registered manager at Rossendale Nursing Home at the time of the incidents, and admitted mistakes she had made that meant two residents did not receive safe care and treatment, and resulted in "avoidable harm" while in her care, said a CQC spokesperson. The first offence was for failures in the care of resident Patricia Sutton, aged 77, who was admitted to the home on 11 October 2018 and had a significant medical history. On 6 November 2019, Patricia Sutton was eating dinner in the dining room and started choking. She was taken to hospital and died later that day. Ms Sutton had previously been involved in three other choking incidents and should have been referred to a speech and language therapist after the second one occurred to properly assess the risks, said the CQC. However, Ms Taylforth "did not safely assess, monitor or manage the risk or make this referral", the CQC concluded. The CQC also prosecuted Ms Taylforth for another incident concerning Dereck John Chapman, aged 82, who was admitted to the home on 22 October 2019 with multiple health issues and was also prone to having falls. Following admission to the home, Mr Chapman suffered at least 14 falls. Ms Taylforth "failed to mitigate" the risk of falls and "failed to ensure" Mr Chapman was promptly referred to appropriate services, such as the falls team, GP, and local authority following known incidents, particularly those resulting in injuries, criticised the CQC. Read full story Source: Medscape, 6 April 2023
  9. News Article
    Confirmation the government has cut hundreds of millions from budgets partly designed to boost health and care integration has been met with fury, with the decision described as leaving the social care reform agenda in ‘tatters’. It was revealed last month that the £1.7bn promised in 2021’s social care white paper to strengthen the sector, and especially its contribution to more integrated services, was set to be drastically cut by ministers. Today’s announcement has confirmed the investment originally ear-marked for “investment in knowledge, skills, health and wellbeing, and recruitment policies [to] improve social care as a long-term career choice” has been cut from £500m to £250m, the £300m promised to “integrate housing into local health and care strategies" cut to zero. The white paper also promised “at least £150m” for investment in digital and technology, but today’s government announcement has capped this at £100m. Overall cuts to the series of reform programme are in the region of £600m. Only £520m has been allocated, and it is unclear where the rest of the original £1.7bn will be spent. Sarah McClinton, president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, said the plan “takes us backwards” and “leaves the government’s vision for reform in tatters”, adding that it “ducks the hard decisions and kicks the can down the road again until after the next election.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 4 April 2023
  10. News Article
    Funding promised to develop the social care workforce in England has been halved, the government has confirmed. In 2021 the government pledged "at least" £500 million for reforms, to be spent on training places and technology over three years. But that figure is now £250 million, according to the Department of Health. A coalition of charities said this cut is "just the latest in a long series of disappointments" over social care. The government said its reforms would give care "the status it deserves" but some organisations in the sector say they fall short of what is needed. Caroline Abrahams, co-chair of the Care and Support Alliance - which represents more than 70 charities - and charity director of Age UK, said the measures "aren't remotely enough to transform social care". Millions of older and disabled people and their carers "needed something far bigger, bolder and more genuinely strategic to give them hope for the future", she said. Read full story Source: BBC News, 4 April 2023
  11. News Article
    Hospices will be forced to turn dying patients away because they are struggling with steeply rising costs at a time when the NHS is not increasing funding. Hospices look after 300,000 patients and families every year across the UK. It costs about £1.5 billion a year for them to provide this care, with only a third of that coming from the NHS. The rest relies on charitable donations and fundraising in local communities as well as sales in charity shops. As hospices battle to keep going, the Treasury has rejected pleas for a £30 million rescue package this year. The money, those in the sector say, would prevent some from having to close inpatient units and beds or reduce their hospice-at-home teams, which care for patients in the community. Some are already making staff redundant and getting rid of beds. Toby Porter, chief executive of Hospice UK, said the government was making “a huge avoidable mistake”, adding: “People will have a lesser experience at an incredibly important moment and it will lead to system pressures affecting the whole health system.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 26 March 2023
  12. Content Article
    This report by the thinktank Public Policy Projects makes a series of recommendations to national government, local government, care providers and technology providers which, if implemented, will aid in the digitisation of the care sector for the benefit of people being supported and cared for, the social care workforce, and the NHS. Digital transformation across the adult social care sector is happening at a rapid pace. Despite being initially slower to adopt technology than colleagues working in the NHS and other health settings, since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic the care sector has been quick to adopt digital social care recording (DSCR) systems, alongside a range of transformative assistive and support technology. In the face of the immense strain on England’s social care system, due to an ageing population combined with chronic funding and workforce challenges, the effective implementation of the right technology could support the people providing care and support and those in receipt of support and provides an opportunity for a better quality of life. 
  13. Content Article
    In this article for the Byline Times, Consultant David Oliver analyses claims by media and political commentators about spending, waste and inefficiency in healthcare and proposes a ten point plan to restore services to their 2010 level.
  14. Content Article
    This PowerPoint presentation summarises the research approach taken by Sarah Balchin, Associate Director of Community Engagement and Experience and Chief Nurse at Solent NHS Trust, for a study into the experience of family carers. The interpretative phenomenological analysis looked at the lived experience of family carers who adopted the role abruptly after a sudden change in the physical health care needs of a family member.
  15. Content Article
    In this article, Richard Murray, Chief Executive of The King's Fund, reflects on what 2023 has in store for the health and care system in England. Acknowledging the intense pressure all services are currently under, he highlights that patients aren't currently receiving the care they need meaning that coping with operational challenges is going to dominate the early part of the year for the health and care sector. He warns of the futility of the Government adding new performance management measures to the sector, and expresses hope that Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) could make a difference by bringing together stakeholders to tackle longer-term problems such as integration, population health and inequalities.
  16. Content Article
    Digital transformation across adult social care is occurring rapidly, however, uptake is not uniform, and the care sector is yet to fully harness digital tools to transform care delivery. With unprecedented service pressure and demand across health and care services, using digital tools in care settings has the potential to relieve some pressure by increasing efficiency and better supporting the workforce. This report by the think tank Public Policy Projects brings together the thoughts and ideas of many Adult Social Care experts regarding the future of the care sector, and the opportunities which digital advancements can bring. Chaired by Damian Green MP, it is intended as a thought-piece to guide action and further work on the area, as a guideline for future development.
  17. Content Article
    NHS England has published its planning guidance for 2023/2023. The 2023/24 priorities and operational planning guidance reconfirms the ongoing need to recover our core services and improve productivity, making progress in delivering the key NHS Long Term Plan ambitions and continuing to transform the NHS for the future.
  18. Content Article
    Hospitals are crammed full of patients, the staffing crisis in adult social care continues to escalate, and alarming numbers of junior doctors report that they are planning to quit their NHS posts to work abroad. The multiple problems confronting the UK’s health and care system are interconnected and have been years in the making. While the pandemic exacerbated many of them, hugely increasing pressures on staff, political failures and, above all, a lack of investment are making it impossible for the service to stand still this winter – let alone recover. This Guardian Editorial gives its view on the current state of the NHS.
  19. News Article
    Many people who are medically ready to leave hospital are not able to go home because of pressures in social care. Health and social care teams across Scotland are working to create more room in hospitals as we go into winter when it traditionally gets busier. In Lothian, they are using care homes as an interim measure to help rehabilitate people before they can go back home. Nineteen rooms at the Elsie Inglis Nursing Home in Edinburgh are being used in an effort to help people get out of hospital. Archie McQuater, who spent seven months in The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh after one of his big toes was removed because of an infection, has finally got out of hospital and is now staying at the Elsie Inglis. The 94-year-old has been in the care home for two months and is trying to improve his mobility so that he can return home. Archie is among 200 people in Edinburgh who have been moved from a hospital to a care home between November 2021 and September 2022. NHS Lothian estimates it has saved about 13,000 bed days in hospitals during that time. Read full story Source: BBC News, 2 November 2022
  20. News Article
    Jeremy Hunt believes spending on the NHS will have to rise and that the increase should be funded through higher taxation. Mr Hunt was speaking at an event less than 48 hours before the prime minister asked him to replace Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor. In a discussion last Wednesday evening with HSJ editor Alastair McLellan and the audience at an event held as part of the Shoreham Literary Festival event, Mr Hunt also rejected the introduction of a social insurance model to fund the NHS and re-iterated the pressing need for the NHS to have a long-term workforce plan. Asked by HSJ if the voices in the Conservative Party calling for a change from the NHS to a social insurance model had gained ascendancy, Mr Hunt said: “The game is not up for the NHS – absolutely not. “We are all going to spend more on our health and care – if you’re in America you’re going to spend more through your insurance premiums – which are going to go up. If you’re in Holland and Germany you’re going to spend more through social insurance premiums. If you’re in Britain, Ireland or New Zealand you’re going to spend more through your taxes.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 17 October 2022
  21. News Article
    Social care services face an “absolute crisis” over record vacancies as unfilled jobs have risen by more than 50% in a year, a new analysis reveals. New data on social care workers shows at least 165,000 vacancies across adult social care providers at the end of 2021-22. This is the highest on record according to the charity Skills for Care, which has collected the data since 2012. Leading think tanks have warned the figures to point to the “absolute crisis” facing social care with the “system on its knees”. At the same time the demand for care has risen, highlighting that social care is facing a complex challenge with recruitment and retention which will be impacting on the lives of people who need social care. The annual report by Skills for Care predicts social care services will need an extra 480,000 workers by 2035 to meet the demand but could be set to lose 430,000 staff to retirement over the next decade. Simon Bottery, senior fellow at The King’s Fund, said the report was evidence “of the absolute crisis social care faces when trying to recruit staff, a crisis that has profound consequences for people needing care”. He added: “A key reason for that is pay, which continues to lag behind other sectors including retail and hospitality, as well as similar roles in the NHS. Our recent analysis found that nearly 400,000 care workers would be better paid to work in most supermarkets." Read full story Source: The Independent, 11 October 2022
  22. News Article
    It was only a year ago that Boris Johnson stood up in Parliament and said he was going to fix the long-term problems in social care. He announced a new tax - to raise about £12bn a year - would be spent on health and social care costs only. But the UK's new prime minister, Liz Truss, has already scrapped the plan. Families, carers and care providers have been left asking where the funding will now come from to fix a system, which they say is broken. Dr Jo Wilson was a high-flying international executive before she was diagnosed with dementia two years ago, aged 66. Her husband, Bill, insists he's her husband, not her carer. But he now sees to Jo's every need. Bill has had to find fight and persistence to navigate the world of dementia care. "It took me two years to get a care package in place for Jo," he explains. "And I only got that because Jo had a collapse at home and was taken into hospital." Even after it was confirmed Jo could have carers come to their home to help, Bill found the variety of staff, unreliable time keeping, and a lack of understanding of dementia, left him questioning whether it was worth it. He's now permanently exhausted, and frustrated. Professor Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, says without a complete restructure of the social care system "thousands, if not millions, will be left without support, and the NHS will be on its knees". It is a warning heeded by others. A new poll by Ipsos Mori for BBC News, suggests more than 70% of those over 55 are not confident that social care services will provide care to those in need. More than half of responses cited staff shortages and limited public funding as their main concerns. Care providers say it's these issues that are putting them under extreme pressure. "We know currently that three in five people with dementia do not get the support that they need once they have that diagnosis. And that leads to crisis in care", says Fiona Carragher, director of policy at the Alzheimer's Society." Read full story Source: BBC News, 7 October 2022
  23. News Article
    Hannah Rusby reassures her patient he’s in good hands. He is in his eighties, skeletal, confused and struggling to answer basic questions. His breathing is rapid. After a few minutes of probing questions and basic tests, Rusby knows this is serious — after months of decline while living alone, the man is critically ill and needs to go to hospital urgently. With more than 500,000 people waiting for social care assessments across England, emergency calls such as this are increasingly common. “We are becoming a middleman for all the other services,” said Rusby, who qualified as a paramedic seven years ago and works for the London Ambulance Service (LAS). She said the job increasingly involves responding to people who fall through society’s cracks. Daniel Elkeles, 49, chief executive of the LAS, agrees: “There are lots of patients who, if something else were available, we wouldn’t need to take them to hospital. As the population has got older and frailer, it’s unsurprising that an increasing number of the calls are not traditional emergencies.” He believes paramedics can be the link between GPs, community nursing and social care. From next week, the LAS will pilot having three cars covering six boroughs in southwest London. Each will have a paramedic and a community nurse and will respond to 999 calls from elderly people who have fallen at home. They’re going to see every frail elderly person who has fallen [and] hasn’t broken a bone, and our aim is to keep all of those patients at home. The community nurse will assess the house to make sure it’s safe then refer the patient to their GP and an urgent community response team,” said Elkeles. The service hopes this will mean as many as 1,000 fewer people going to A&E a year. Read full story (paywalled) Source: Sunday Times, 2 September 2022
  24. News Article
    Ministers are setting up a £500m emergency fund to get thousands of medically fit patients out of hospital as soon as possible in an attempt to prevent the NHS becoming overwhelmed this winter. Thérèse Coffey, the new health secretary, unveiled the move in the Commons on Thursday as part of her plans to tackle the growing crisis in the health service, especially patients’ long delays for care. The newly created adult social care discharge fund is intended to relieve the pressure on overstretched hospitals in England by ensuring that patients whom doctors have judged well enough to leave can be safely discharged either to their home or into a care home. In her first speech since becoming the health secretary 16 days ago, Coffey told MPs: “I can announce today that we are launching a £500m adult social care discharge fund for this winter. “The local NHS will be working with councils with targeted plans on specific care packages to support people being either in their own home or in the wider community. This £500m acts as the downpayment in the rebalancing of funding across health and social care as we develop our longer-term plan.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 22 September 2022
  25. News Article
    Adult social care in England is in serious crisis, Tory council leaders have warned the government, as it faces a £3.7bn funding gap and a growing staffing shortage that has brought many local care providers to the brink of collapse. The intervention by the County Councils Network, which represents 36 mainly Tory-run authorities, comes amid widespread local government concern over the increasing fragile state of social care. Care costs have accelerated recently, fuelled by unexpected wage and energy inflation. “We face the perfect storm of staffing shortages, fewer care beds, and higher costs – all of which will impact on individuals waiting for care and discharges from hospital,” said Martin Tett, the Tory leader of Buckinghamshire county council. Cathie Williams, the chief executive of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, said: “Too many people are missing out on vital care and support – we estimate that over half a million people are waiting for assessments, care, or reviews. With over 165,000 staff vacancies, this is only set to get worse. ” A government spokesperson said: “The health and social care secretary is focused on delivering for patients and has set out her four priorities of A, B, C, D – reducing ambulance delays, busting the Covid backlogs, improving care, and increasing the number of doctors and dentists. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 21 September 2022
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