Tag Archives: Older care
Ministers have promised to publish plans to reform social care later this year
Forget about ‘social care pot of gold’
By Nick Triggle Health correspondent, BBC News
There will be no “pot of gold” to answer the prayers of councils struggling to look after the elderly, according to social care chiefs.
Ministers have promised to reform the system amid signs local authorities are struggling to keep pace with demand.
But Sarah Pickup, the new president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, said changes in England would still be years away.
Crisis in care of elderly as £1bn cuts bite
Hundreds of thousands face reduction in their support
Wednesday 18 April 2012
Hundreds of thousands of elderly and disabled people face cuts to their support and assistance this year as councils struggle to find new savings of £1bn from social-care budgets, an investigation by The Independent has established.
As town halls cut spending on help for the vulnerable by up to 10 per cent, care homes are being shut, social workers made redundant and charges for day care increased.
There are also warnings that the measures could be counterproductive, as they will increase the strain on hospitals required to care for people not well enough to live at home without support. The economies are being forced through as the cumulative effects of austerity measures announced by the Chancellor mount.
The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (Adass) calculates that budgets dropped in England by £1bn last year and forecasts another £1bn in cuts over the next two years.
Council chiefs are wielding the axe at a time when demographic pressures are growing, with the number of people aged over 85 increasing by more than 250,000 in the last six years.
800,000 vulnerable elderly fighting to stay in their homes
Some 800,000 vulnerable elderly people are struggling to live in their own homes without any state-provided home help, say campaigners who argue the most vulnerable in society are being “catastrophically let down” by social services
By Stephen Adams, Medical Correspondent
6:30AM BST 16 Apr 2012
Councils have slashed spending on social care in the last few years, as Westminster has cut local authority funding.
Now more than four in five councils (82 per cent) will only fund home help for people with substantial or critical care needs, up from about half in 2005, according to official figures.
The result is that around 800,000 older people out of two million with care needs – many with dementia – are trying to live without any state-provided care, according to the charity Age UK.
It has joined forces with the British Geriatrics Society to lobby ministers for higher funding for social care services.
