Author Archives: wendy
Support for carers must be central to social care white paper
Government’s upcoming reforms must take the needs and contributions of unpaid carers into account
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Heléna Herklots
- Guardian Professional,
We will all need care or provide care for loved ones at some point in our lives – it is an issue for all of society and all parts of government.
As care and support for older and disabled people rises up the political agenda, decision-makers and the public are confronted with an array of stark statistics on the rising demand for care – with the number of people over 80 to double by 2020, 11 million people alive today expected to live to 100, the number of adults with learning disabilities to rise by a third by 2030 and the number of carers by 50% in the next 25 years to 9 million.
But these statistics do little to shed light on what this care challenge means in practical terms or what solutions might look like. They also fail to truly reflect how demographic change is bringing about significant shifts in all of our lives – not just the lives of people using social care services.
Crisis in care of elderly as £1bn cuts bite
Hundreds of thousands face reduction in their support
Wednesday 18 April 2012
Hundreds of thousands of elderly and disabled people face cuts to their support and assistance this year as councils struggle to find new savings of £1bn from social-care budgets, an investigation by The Independent has established.
As town halls cut spending on help for the vulnerable by up to 10 per cent, care homes are being shut, social workers made redundant and charges for day care increased.
There are also warnings that the measures could be counterproductive, as they will increase the strain on hospitals required to care for people not well enough to live at home without support. The economies are being forced through as the cumulative effects of austerity measures announced by the Chancellor mount.
The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (Adass) calculates that budgets dropped in England by £1bn last year and forecasts another £1bn in cuts over the next two years.
Council chiefs are wielding the axe at a time when demographic pressures are growing, with the number of people aged over 85 increasing by more than 250,000 in the last six years.
Who will take responsibility for rolling out ‘telecare’?
Despite the government’s enthusiasm for telecare, many GPs will be too busy trying to commission to learn how to do it
Last week, I expressed my disappointment with the King’s Fund’s International Telehealth and Telecare Conference. I am so upset that I am returning to the subject again.
For starters, I was amazed that there were only three GPs present. I found this strange, as telecare is likely to change the way GPs treat patients for ever. Or do GPs consider telehealth as just another irritating technology, like electronic patient records and email, which will go away if you ignore them long enough?
One speaker involved in the project said that GPs were divided between those who were interested, those who were not sure and those who didn’t want to know. One GP claimed that telecare increased patient anxiety and workload for GPs.
