Category Archives: ukcuts
Great grandmother, 100, died ‘because of carers’ poor English’
A 100-year-old woman died from a fractured skull after falling from a sling because there was a “language barrier” with her foreign nurses, an inquest heard.
By Hayley Dixon
3:51PM GMT 09 Jan 2013
Great-grandmother May Lavinia Ward was “full of life” until she fell a metre and a half from a bucket sling as she was moved from a chair to a bed, fracturing her skull, and hip and breaking her knee.
Carers Shasha Wei, from China, and Rumyana Ivanova, from Bulgaria, put the bloodied dementia patient back to bed for forty minutes after she had jerked forward onto the floor when one of them let her go.
Her agitation may have been caused because she couldn’t understand them, Hertfordshire Coroners Court heard today.
They had even changed her clothes but eventually a nurse at Meppershall Care Home, Bedfordshire, was informed and paramedics rushed to the scene to find Mrs Ward, who had a broken leg and swollen eye, vomiting dark blood.
Neighbours must help elderly more – Norman Lamb
Neighbours must help elderly more – Norman Lamb
Ministers are considering a cap on social care feesPeople should do more to help elderly neighbours and ease the pressure on care homes, the care minister has said.
Greater community support would prevent pensioners living a “dismal existence” and going into care unnecessarily, said Norman Lamb.
He told the Daily Telegraph local councils should be helped to rebuild a “neighbourly resilience“.
He also said a deal to cap personal spending on care fees would be unveiled in coming weeks.
The cap was a key recommendation of the government-appointed Dilnot Commission report into care in England, which said it should be set at between £25,000 and £50,000, with £35,000 the fairest figure.
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.
By Tim Ross, 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.
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