Category Archives: Carers

Elderly face ‘revolving door’ hospital care under nursing cuts

May 14, 2012   Carers, Older care, ukcuts

Elderly patients face a ‘revolving door’, being shuttled between hospital and home because of cuts to community nursing, the Royal College of Nursing claims today (Mon).

6:30AM BST 14 May 2012

The union is branding Government efforts to provide more care out of hospitals – to reduce cases of ‘bed blocking’ and enable people tolive more independently – as a “façade” due to the cuts.

Numbers of community nurses – a catch-all term for district nurses,healthcare workers, school nurses and others – have dropped by 3.5 per cent the peak in 2009, according to an RCN survey, with the profession losing about 1,700 posts across England.

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500,000 to lose disability benefit

May 13, 2012   Carers, disability, ukcuts

Half a million people are set to lose disability benefits as the Government pushes ahead with plans to rid the system of abuse and fraud, Iain Duncan Smith says.

By , Political Editor

10:00PM BST 13 May 2012

 

In an interview with today’s Daily Telegraph, the Work and Pensions Secretary says that he is determined to introduce radical reforms to disability benefits which will see more than two million claimants reassessed in the next four years.

Iain Duncan Smith says that the number of claimants has risen by 30 percent in recent years “rising well ahead of any other gauge you might make about illness, sickness, disability”. Losing a limb should not automatically entitle people to a pay-out, he suggests.

The cost of disability living allowance, which is intended to help people meet the extra costs of mobility and care associated with their conditions, now outstrips unemployment benefit and will soon be £13 billion annually.

Under the reform plans, the existing benefit will be replaced with a simpler “more focused” allowance and only those medically assessed to be in genuine need of support will continue to qualify.

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Poor hit hardest by UK govt. policies

May 13, 2012   Carers, disability, Older care, poverty
Carers feel forgotten by society 
The poorest households have been most affected by the soaring cost of living in Britain as they spend a higher proportion of their incomes to meet the problem of food and energy bills, warns a new research.

According to a study by Trades Union Congress (TUC), Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation for the poorest 10 percent of households in February was 4.1 percent, compared with 3.6 percent for middle-income families and 3.3 per cent for the richest 10 percent.

“People have been getting poorer every month for the last two years as high inflation, tax rises and the dire state of the economy take their toll on family budgets,” said TUC general secretary Brendan Barber.

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