Tag Archives: Older care
45,000 elderly and disabled people in North-East and N Yorkshire have ‘lost’ council-funded care
MORE than 45,000 elderly and disabled people across the region have “lost” council-funded care in just three years, campaigners are warning.
9:40pm Wednesday 12th February 2014 in News By Robert Merrick, Parliamentary Correspondent
Fall in access to social care The huge decline – of almost one fifth across the North-East and Yorkshire – is the result of “chronic underfunding” of town halls, the Care and Support Alliance said.
Cash-starved authorities are being forced to “ration” care – even to people who need help to “to get up, get washed, and get dressed and get out of the house”
Now the Alliance is warning the Government’s flagship plans to reform the battered care system will fail unless councils are given “long term, sustainable funding”.
Richard Hawkes, its chairman, said: “Like most other parts of the country, the North-East and Yorkshire are experiencing a squeeze on social care.
“Chronic underfunding has left large numbers of older and disabled people, who need support to do the basics, like getting up or out of the house, cut out of the care system.”
Carers on benefits have now become financially vulnerable too
THE ageing population is causing some of the biggest social problems we have had to confront in decades.
Even so, it is absolutely shocking to discover that the six million men and women who selflessly care for the sick and the elderly are suffering from serious financial hardship as a direct result of their actions.
Prince Charles: good food in hospitals should be a priority
Prince Charles said ‘food is a medicine in itself’ and called for greater emphasis on good quality hospital meals
By Alice Philipson
7:06AM GMT 31 Jan 2014
Prince Charles wants the NHS to see “food as a medicine in itself”, claiming better hospital meals would speed up recovery times.
He called for the quality of food served by the NHS to be made a “clinical priority” and said long-overdue changes could have benefits in other areas of health care such as malnutrition among the elderly.
It comes less than a month after the Telegraph disclosed that more than one in three hospital trusts have cut spending on patients’ meals in the past year.
Some hospitals are now spending as little as 69p on each meal, according to Department of Health figures, with meals at one trust described as “worse than prison”.
