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Suffolk: New ways of delivering care on the way
Suffolk: New ways of delivering care on the way
Suffolk Family Carers chief executive Jacqui Martin
Paul Geater Thursday, September 5, 2013
9:00 AM
Home care for frail people across Suffolk could get a radical shake-up after a county-wide consultation over the next few months.
Meals on Wheels changes
The county is also looking at how it provides community meals services from September next year.
At present it provides 219,000 hot meals to about 725 customers a year. The cost of the meals is £1.4 million, and the £5.50 cost of the meals brings in £1.2 million – meaning the cost to the council is just over £200,000 a year.
About half of the meals have to be put on plates for the customer, 35% require diabetic diets, and 15% need “modified texture diets.”
Dr Murray said the council would be looking at how these meals were delivered – for those who were able to cope it might be better to deliver frozen meals that could be microwaved when needed. The cost of those is £3.20 each.
However because an increasing number of customers were very frail, that might not be a solution for many of those requiring the service.
Britain has become a ‘neglectful society’, warns care minister
The demands of modern life have turned Britain into a “neglectful society” in which has become the norm for older people to be left isolated, a minister has warned.
Norman Lamb, the care minister, said that elderly people are being starved of basic kindness and companionship because of extended family networks, which once underpinned society, have been increasingly dispersed.
Mr Lamb, who is spearheading wide-ranging reforms to the care system, said state intervention would not in itself be enough provide people with the “good life” in their final years unless people “step up” and play a greater part.
Addressing a conference organised by the Alzheimer’s Society in London, he also acknowledged that the home-care system is now so starved of cash that increasingly depends on “exploiting” low-paid carers, often immigrant workers, who “subsidise” their work from their own pocket.
GPs charge disabled up to £130 to appeal fitness-to-work decisions
Doctors are charging sick and disabled people up to £130 for medical evidence to appeal decisions about their fitness to work, The Independent has learnt.
NHS GPs are telling patients they will only provide the necessary details to challenge controversial Work Capability Assessments if they pay. Others are refusing to help at all.
Citizens Advice say in many areas GPs are helping with an appeal only if patients pay a fee of between £25 and £130. There are also reports from 15 of its centres that family surgeries are refusing to provide evidence at all.
GPs who refuse to help – or charge increasingly high fees – argue that writing up medical evidence takes up time when they could be helping patients.
But Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, said: “Charging sick and disabled people more than £100 for medical evidence beggars belief. This process is clearly failing.”
