Carers let down by complicated and means-tested process

Carers let down by complicated and means-tested process

 

The Guardian,

Macmillan Cancer Support welcomes the government’s announcement that it will implement plans to improve co-ordination between health and social care (Plans unveiled for ‘joined-up’ health and social care, 14 May). People with cancer and their carers are often being let down by the current system, particularly at the end of life. Although the vast majority of people with cancer want to die at home surrounded by their loved ones, most will die in hospital simply because joined-up care services are not available in their local communities.

The current process for accessing state-funded social care is complicated, lengthy and frequently operates separately from the healthcare system. Too often this leads to delays which stop people being able to receive the care they desperately need to die in the place of their choice. Integration between health and social care services would help make it easier for people to access social care at the end of life, allowing more people to get the support they need to die at home.

But the benefits of integration will not be fully realised so long as people are still unable to access social care because of the complex system of means-testing. That’s why the government must introduce, before the end of this parliament, free social care for people in the last weeks of life to help more people to die at home if they so wish.
Gus Baldwin
Macmillan Cancer Support

• Further to the Royal College of GPs report about the mental health of carers (Carers should be monitored for mental health problems, warn doctors, 11 May), how many carers suffer bouts of anorexia and bulimia? If a teenager or young person in their 20s suffers from anorexia or bulimia, a relative or friend soon becomes aware of it and becomes alarmed; if a middle-aged carer suffers a bout of either or both it’s odds-on nobody will notice, particularly the carer herself (or himself).

When, during caring, I suffered such bouts, I was not aware of it until one day, accidentally, I saw a reflection of myself in a shop window and was shocked to see that my legs were like sticks. Fortunately, I managed to shake myself out of it. I know I used to have thoughts of suicide, but did nothing about it because I knew that if I was gone there would be no one to take over the care of my loved ones. Could anorexia in a carer longing for peace be a way of committing suicide subconsciously?

Caring for loved ones can cause at least three problems: mental health through fatigue and stress, physical problems such as back problems caused by heavy lifting of elderly relatives or a disabled child, financial problems caused by giving up one’s employment because caring becomes a 24/7 job.
Barbara MacArthur
Cardiff

• All credit to the Royal College of GPs for raising the issue of carer stress. But the coverage was largely focused on the call for family carers to be screened for depression. Is this not the medicalisation of an essentially social problem? Surely a more obvious solution would be for carers to be given more breaks from caring. The investment should be in social care, not a screening programme.
Professor Jonathan Scourfield
Cardiff University

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