Bed-blocking problem increased because of council cuts 

9:30am Monday 1st August 2011

THE decision to axe in-house county council care staff has added to the bed-blocking crisis, according to a council source.

A social care employee told the Oxford Mail that hospitalised pensioners who relied on council carers could not return home as they were waiting for private care to be arranged.

The council’s own internal home support service is being wound down after the council decided to axe it in April.

The worker, who did not want to be named, said: “Because we are now not taking new work on, when our clients go into hospital for a week they are taken off our books.

“They then have to wait until a private contractor is found to take them on [before they can return home].

“This is not helping with bed-blocking, it is increasing it.

“We have ended up pouring money down the drain on bed-blocking while we get rid of the main care force in the community.

“None of this makes sense to any of us. These people could come out of hospital and we could be caring for them.”

Last night Oxfordshire County Council denied it was scrapping care plans but admitted it had encountered “short-term issues” in sourcing care.

Government figures have shown a slight decrease in the number of well people stuck in Oxfordshire’s hospital beds with nowhere to go, with 103 people in June, down from 129 the previous month.

Last week, the Oxford Mail revealed Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital had been forced to open a 36-bed ward to deal with people who no longer actually needed treatment.

County council spokesman Marcus Mabberley denied that halting the council care service had made bed-blocking worse.

“Nobody is having their care plan scrapped,” he said.

“It can take time to implement care plans for people in hospital – or any setting – due to a number of factors, including the individual circumstances of each client.

“A new and expanded approved-provider list is in place and is designed to help address this issue.”

The county is the second worst for bed-blocking out of 153 local authority areas, June figures show.

The bed-blocking problem is costing Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals £3.3m a year, at a time it must find £52m of savings in this year alone.

Meanwhile, Oxfordshire County Council is cutting £119m from its budget over four years.

Since last October, as part of the Government’s Transforming Adult Social Care drive, county bosses have been given control of ‘personalised budgets’ allowing them to choose how to spend council money on care and which private contractors they commission care from.

It is understood council directors have now admitted to staff that, under the new system, the time between the initial assessment of clients’ needs and the delivery of services to them has increased.

http://www.thisisoxfordshire.co.uk/news/9170127._Cuts_have_made_problem_worse_/?ref=rss