Monthly Archives: September 2014

Extra funding for mental health services in Norfolk

Vulnerable patients are set to get extra support after more than £500,000 was invested to hire more mental health staff at two Norfolk hospitals.

Adam Gretton Health correspondent adam.gretton@archant.co.uk
Monday, September 29, 2014
2:40 PM

Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) will use the investment from Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG) to place mental health staff in the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn.

Health chiefs welcomed the extra funding, which will help recruit four mental health nurses for the psychiatric liaison team and an additional consultant psychiatrist this winter at the N&N.

More than 100 elderly a week are having properties seized to pay for care home fees

  • Between 30,000-40,000 thought to lose homes this way every year

  • Coalition promised a cap on care costs by 2016, but this will only apply to bills of £72,000 or more
  • Those with assets of more than £23,250 are expected to pay their own way 
  • Critics say the system denies families their inheritances and punishes those who have worked hard, saved and paid mortgages 

By Steve Doughty, Social Affairs Correspondent For The Daily Mail

More than 100 homes a week are being seized from elderly people by councils to pay for their care home fees.

Families have been forced to hand over properties because local authorities are refusing to pay for the care.

Suffolk: Red Cross to care for discharged hospital patients in their homes

Plans for post discharge patient care revealed

Thursday, September 25, 2014
8:45 AM

Hospital patients in Ipswich and east Suffolk could soon be cared for in their homes by the Red Cross after being discharged.

Plans will be discussed later this month to send Red Cross staff to the homes of patients in the three days following a hospital stay.

The move is designed to provide post discharge support to patients for 72 hours and is one of several direct services to be contracted to the third sector in an effort to curb unnecessarily long hospital stays.