Monthly Archives: December 2012

Computers are latest donations to Mile Cross Phoenix Centre’s arson appeal

Computers are latest donations to Mile Cross Phoenix Centre’s arson appeal

Phoenix Centre children's development worker Trish Hewett receives the donated computer from Wendy Maxwell and Derek Oakes from carer group chill4us.
PHOTO BY SIMON FINLAY Phoenix Centre children’s development worker Trish Hewett receives the donated computer from Wendy Maxwell and Derek Oakes from carer group chill4us. PHOTO BY SIMON FINLAY

By Tom Bristow Monday, December 31, 2012
10:22 AM

An arson-hit community centre was given a helping hand on Friday when a carers group donated a computer.

The Phoenix Centre in Mile Cross was partially destroyed in a fire on Saturday, December 15. But a flood of donations has meant the Mile Cross Road community centre has quickly got back on its feet.

The PC was donated by Wendy Maxwell from Hellesdon, who founded a website and chatroom for carers called Chill4us.

Mrs Maxwell said: “It was a real joy to give the PC to the Phoenix Centre. It was awful that such a thing should happen around Christmas. The staff are keeping cheerful through difficult times.”

Thousands of elderly needlessly in hospital

Thousands of elderly people are being kept in hospital needlessly after the number of district nurses fell by almost one fifth.

 

Delays in patients being discharged from hospital – often those who are elderly and frail – are frequently the result of a lack of NHS services in the community, such as district nurses

By , Political Correspondent

8:00AM GMT 31 Dec 2012

Official NHS figures disclosed that the number of district nurses working in England declined from 7,813 in May 2010 to 6,424 in August this year.

This represented an 18 per cent cut in the service, which provides nurses to visit elderly and disabled adults in their own homes, since the Coalition was formed.

The fall coincided with a marked increase in the number of days that frail patients spent on hospital wards because of a shortage of adequate community health and care services.

Care of the elderly: it's not too late to make Britain a good place in which to grow old

At this time of year as families gather, our thoughts turn to the nation’s elderly and how to provide for them fairly

 

The elderly need the cap on social care to be honoured and paid for fairly.

Over Christmas and New Year, families gather, take stock and compare notes. One family’s grandfather died after just retiring, but an elderly aunt, who has never taken any exercise, is living well into her 90s and racking up enormous care bills. It is never more obvious that life expectancy, even allowing for the inequalities of class, is still a roll of the dice. The healthy die of the unexpected, while the unhealthy can live well beyond their expected span.

Figures confirm the reality. You could be among the one in four people who, after they reach 65, will spend very little or nothing on their care before they die. Alternatively, you could be among the one in 10 with some endemic ailment who will spend more than £100,000 and, on current rules, be forced to sell your house to pay for the care. In an ageing society, this is beginning to become a politically hot issue.

Nor have the consequences of age and infirmity much to do with virtue, “striving” or your due deserts. If you have been dealt the wrong genes – dementia, say, or some crippling disability – you will be hit however virtuously you have lived, and the care costs could be explosive and long lasting. This is one of the brute hazards of life.