Category Archives: ukcuts
State-funded elderly care declining, Labour figures suggest
By Nick Triggle Health correspondent, BBC News
Freedom of Information responses from 121 councils showed they provided free care to 59,056 over 65s in 2011-12, down from 66,342 in 2009-10.
The drop comes despite the rise in over-65s due to the ageing population.
Campaigners said it proved the system needed urgent reform – something ministers say they are looking to do.
Labour asked all 153 councils that have responsibility for providing free care at home and in care homes a series of FOI questions.
Elderly face ‘revolving door’ hospital care under nursing cuts
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.
500,000 to lose disability benefit
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.
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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