- Ed Davey warns social care “avalanche” threatens to bury NHS as figures reveal hospitals hardest hit by delayed discharges
- Ofwat chief exec admits water bills will go up: Time for a proper regulator with teeth
- Sunak has “thrown in the towel” one year on after resigning from Johnson government
Ed Davey warns social care “avalanche” threatens to bury NHS as figures reveal hospitals hardest hit by delayed discharges
- Ed Davey gives speech to LGA Conference warning of impending catastrophe for NHS unless government fixes social care crisis
- New analysis reveals hospitals lost 128,000 bed days in May to delayed discharges, up 40% compared to last year
- NHS trusts hardest hit by delayed discharges include Liverpool, Leeds, East Sussex and Surrey
- Lib Dem Leader calls for a Carer’s Minimum Wage to fix social care staffing crisis
Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey will tomorrow warn that a social care “avalanche” is “threatening to bury the NHS”, in a speech to the Local Government Association’s annual conference.
It comes as new research has revealed the hospitals hardest hit by delayed discharges, with thousands of bed days being lost because medically fit patients are stuck in hospital waiting for care.
The House of Commons Library analysis commissioned by the Liberal Democrats reveals the NHS lost over 128,800 bed days to delayed discharges from hospital in May, up 32% on the same period last year. The vast majority (82%) of bed days lost involved patients who been stuck in hospital for three weeks or more.
The NHS trusts with the highest number of bed days lost to delayed discharges were Liverpool University Hospitals (8,146), East Sussex (4,505), Leeds Teaching Hospitals (4,370), University Hospitals Sussex (4,450) and Frimley in Surrey (3,748).
Delayed discharges take place when medically fit patients are unable to leave hospital, often due to a lack of social care.
The Liberal Democrats are calling for the introduction of a Carer’s Minimum Wage, £2 above the minimum wage, to tackle huge shortages in the social care sector. This would help address the staggering 165,000 vacancies in social care, which are leaving far too many patients stranded in hospitals waiting for the care they need.
In his speech at the Local Government Association conference, Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey is expected to say:
Social care has been under extreme pressure for years. Now it’s turning into an avalanche, and threatening to bury the NHS.
We know that the crisis in the NHS is inextricably linked to the crisis in social care. You can’t fix the NHS without fixing social care.
The crisis in social care means that only two in five people are able to leave hospital when they are ready to do so, putting even more pressure on already overstretched hospitals. It’s all connected. And it’s all causing so much pain and distress.
There aren’t nearly enough carers. More than one in ten frontline care jobs are unfilled, leaving more than two and a half million people without the care they need. This isn’t a job we can outsource to ChatGPT. We simply have to recruit more carers.
But we won’t do it while carers earn less than even the lowest-paid jobs in supermarkets and call centres. We won’t do it unless the Government starts valuing carers properly, and makes sure they are paid properly too.
That’s why the Liberal Democrats are calling for a new Carers’ Minimum Wage. A big idea, to start to solve the crisis in social care, and help to solve the crisis in our NHS too.
Ofwat chief exec admits water bills will go up: Time for a proper regulator with teeth
Responding to the Chief Executive of Ofwat saying on the Today Programme this morning that he expects water companies will increase bills to pay for infrastructure improvements, Liberal Democrat Environment Spokesperson Tim Farron said:
It is pathetic for the so-called regulator to let water firms hike prices, when they’ve handed out millions in dividends and bonuses.
Customers shouldn’t be forced to pay to clean up the water companies’ own mess.
What is the point of Ofwat when they let profiteering firms get away with this environmental destruction? It’s time ministers got tough on this wild west industry, and set up a proper regulator with real teeth.
Sunak has “thrown in the towel” one year on after resigning from Johnson government
The Liberal Democrats have said Rishi Sunak has “thrown in the towel” on tackling Conservative sleaze, one year to the day after he resigned from Boris Johnson’s scandal-hit government.
A year ago today, in his resignation letter to Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak said that the “public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously,” and these “standards are worth fighting for.”
But since then Sunak has failed to vote on the Privileges Committee report condemning Boris Johnson for misleading Parliament over partygate, refused to block Johnson’s crony’s honours list and now has the worst attendance record at PMQs of any Prime Minister since 1979.
Liberal Democrat Chief Whip Wendy Chamberlain commented:
A year ago today, Sunak resigned from Boris Johnson’s government because he claimed standards like competence and integrity were worth fighting for.
Now he’s too weak to vote to condemn Johnson’s partygate lies and too scared to even turn up to PMQs.
Rishi Sunak has thrown in the towel while the country suffers from endless Conservative sleaze and scandal.
Families facing soaring mortgages and rents or struggling to get a GP appointment deserve better than a Prime Minister who won’t even turn up for the day job.
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7 Comments
Delayed discharge is a huge problem across all the countries of the UK irrespective of the political party in government. My view is that part of the problem is that local councils have an incentive to be slow in assessing the care needs of those awaiting discharge as councils often have to pick up the costs once a patient is discharged. Therefore, it may be worth incentivising councils to complete the process rapidly – perhaps by hospitals charging councils a daily ‘bed and breakfast’ charge for each patient unable to be discharged due to them awaiting an assessment or care to be arranged by their local council.
And where, Mr Borthwaite, should councils get the money for your scheme? By cutting yet more vital services ? Get real
Having been a voluntary Treasurer and Chairman of a very well run care home for 10 years, I can confirm that we would have gone bust if we had filled our facility on what the council paid us. We only took self financed residents but had a few council sponsored residents who had run out of money. Increasing carers wages in council fllled homes would be a recipe for disaster. Private residents paid circa, £4’k more a year than council financed residents. Councils either need to have more funds to pay the going rate or a different public financing needs to be implemenyed. Like mich in the NHS it all comes down to £££.
“My view is that part of the problem is that local councils have an incentive to be slow in assessing the care needs of those awaiting discharge as councils often have to pick up the costs once a patient is discharged.”
My experience (of West Berkshire) is much of the delay is lining the ducks up.
1) We need to appreciate that someone can be assessed as being fit for discharged because they no longer need the level of medical care the hospital provides.
2) The discharge needs assessment only begins once someone has been assessed as being fit for discharge and social services notified.
3) Having assessed needs, the place into which a person is to be discharged can be selected and assessed.
4) If discharge is to home, this will often require an assessment and adaptation of the home and the sourcing of care workers. If to a care home then finding an appropriate bed is required.
5) Finally, the person can be physically discharged.
Delaying discharge doesn’t really change the care costs the council picks up, West Berks for example paid the first 6 weeks following discharge.
My view is there needs to be a level of convalescence provision that bridges the period between fit for discharge from hospital and post recovery living.
I can also claim to have been the cause of several weeks of bed blocking, as I strongly objected to the idea that a bed ridden patient with an end of life condition could be discharged to the home they occupied as an able bodied person prior to hospital admission without any adaptation or care support beyond the daily nurse visits (paid by the NHS).
Both NHS and Social Services presumed a patient could be discharged and family, friends and neighbours would simply drop everything and rush to support their now bed ridden relative /neighbour and thus had difficulty understanding why someone living over 2 hours away with job commitments and young family wasn’t going to pickup the responsibilities and financial costs they were throwing over the fence to them. After the penny had dropped (with the assistance of solicitors) we were able to build a really good working relationship and things happened and bills ultimately got paid.
We obviously need more hospices offering good quality care which need to be funded by a mixture council tax and central government. There are not enough spaces for people needing end of life care and it gets very frustrating when families have to battle with various departments to get a place for their relative at a time of stress and distress.
@Roland
“My view is there needs to be a level of convalescence provision that bridges the period between fit for discharge from hospital and post recovery living.”
Could that be what we used to call ‘cottage hospitals’?