£593M COST OF CARING FOR ULSTER’S ELDERLY

Bill set to soar £212m by 2037

NORTHERN Ireland is facing an additional bill of more than £200million to care for its older people, the Mirror can reveal.

Figures obtained by this paper show around £212million in extra funding will be required by 2037.

And it is estimated there may need to be a doubling in the number of people working in social care if current trends continue.

The revelations come as new figures show the number of people in the region aged 85 and over has increased by 33% in the past decade.

The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency said that group has grown more than five times faster than the overall population – and this is proving a massive headache for local health chiefs.

One source told the Mirror: “A serious debate has to take place about how we are going to deal with this situation.

“If the current growth in older people continues, for a start we are going to

INCREASES in life expectancy have officially ground to a halt in the UK for the first time since records began.

Office for National Statistics data shows an average of 79.2 years for men and 82.9 years need a lot more social care workers. Part of the debate needs to be what we pay social care workers because at the minute they are on a par with people stacking shelves at Tesco.

This is not sustainable.

“And what people need to realise is when social care collapses, the entire health service collapses.

“When the care packages are not

for women – the same as previous figures from two years earlier.

This is the first time it has happened since modern records began in 2000.

Resolution Foundation there for people who are in hospital to be discharged then the blockages start and that is when serious problems start.” A source claimed projected needs show an extra 20,101 care packages will be needed in 2037 compared to 2016, an increase of 68%. This will come at an additional cost of £212million bringing the total bill to £593million.

Chief social worker Sean Holland said the figures “graphically illustrate the scale of the challenge we are facing in terms of providing sustainable adult social care in the years ahead”.

chairman David

Willetts said: “Rising life expectancy has been one of the biggest boons to our living standards over the last century.

“Getting to the bottom of why this long-term improvement has stalled is crucial for policy makers, economists and politicians.” Life expectancy for males in Northern Ireland has decreased by 0.1 years, while for females it is unchanged.