Elderly ‘ stuck’ in hospital by care crisis

THE crisis condemning elderly and disabled people to remain in hospital when they could be let home will never be resolved unless funding for adult social care is boosted, council bosses warn.

Local Government Association ( LGA) members say services are severely strained and want next month’s Budget to offer the same protection to social care as to the NHS.

Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to ringfence the English NHS budget from spending cuts until 2020.

The LGA says extra funding is vital to give vulnerable people the support they need to live in their own homes for as long as possible

Its chairman David Sparks blamed insufficient funding, growing demand, escalating costs and a 40 per cent cut to council budgets for the crisis.

Councils spent £ 14.6billion on adult social care in the past financial year – or 35 per cent of overall budgets.

Mr Sparks said: “Too many older people are being let down by a system which leaves them languishing in hospital beds while they wait for an alternative, or consigned to residential care because we lack the capacity to help them live independently.”

The warning comes months after it emerged bed blocking reached its highest level in four years. On one day in September last year in England more than 4,966 patients could not be discharged because of a lack of adult care, at an estimated monthly cost to the NHS of £ 34million.

JUST what will it take for the Government to accept the fact that we are an ageing society and the problems associated with an older population are not going to go away? The Local Government Association has called for social care to be protected in next month’s Budget as much as the NHS – it is absolutely right to do so.

The provision of care in old age is one of the most thorny issues that we as a society have got to face. We are getting older but unfortunately we are also getting more frail and we must look after the elderly in as humane a way as possible.

That means keeping them out of hospital when we can and providing alternative care, either through funding for care homes or increased help in their own home.

The elderly are the most vulnerable in our society. We must properly tend to their needs.