Charity pays NHS £2m to bolster care for sufferers

A CHARITY has become so worried about the quality of care offered to NHS patients that it is donating a record £2million to pay for nurses and treatments.

Parkinson’s UK has been driven to “stage an intervention” after being inundated with complaints from sufferers about lengthy waiting times for their vital neuro-physiotherapy appointments.

The money will be directed to areas of the UK struggling the most and will pay for 24 specialists covering physio, occupational and speech and language therapy and mental health.

Campaigner Dennis Reed, of over-60s group, Silver Voices said: “What a sorry state of collapse the NHS is in if a charity has to fund core services, including nursing staff.

“It’s typical that diseases affecting older people like Parkinson’s and dementia are grossly underfunded.

“The charities should be campaigning with us for a health funding rescue plan rather than trying to plug holes in a rusty bucket.”

It is not the first intervention of this type. Last year, Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity donated £1million for seven NHS nursing posts to care for children and young people with epilepsy.

Meanwhile, the NHS budget in 2020-21 was £192billion.

But due to the impact of the pandemic, there are a record 6.2 million people waiting to start treatment, the highest number since records began in August 2007, NHS data shows. Dr

Donald Grosset, a consultant neurologist, said: “NHS England has published plans on how health services should recover. However the focus is on addressing the cancer and surgery backlogs.

“Neurology and Parkinson’s aren’t even mentioned. We are taking the initiative and working with health professionals across the UK to support and grow the workforce to drive up the quality of care.

“Parkinson’s is the fastest growing neurological condition in the world. More than 145,000 people in the UK have Parkinson’s. There is no cure.”

Dr Rowan Wathes, associate director of the UK Parkinson’s Excellence Network, said: “Prior to the pandemic, we knew Parkinson’s care needed investment, but the Covid crisis has turned the once tiny cracks in services into yawning fissures and there are now huge backlogs.

“This calls for unprecedented steps from the charity.”

Analysis of NHS data by the Neurological Alliance revealed by the end of March last year, more than 150,000 people were waiting to be assessed by a specialist.

As many as 60,000 were waiting for a neurosurgery appointment.And 10,000 out of this number had been waiting for more than a year.

A research team at Lancaster University found that 29 per cent of

Parkinson’s patients had consultant appointments cancelled, 27 per cent had specialist nurse appointments called off and 17 per cent had either physiotherapy or speech and language therapy slots scrapped.

The £2million donation – announced during Parkinson’s Awareness Month – comes via the charity’s UK Parkinson’s Excellence Network, a group of more than 8,000 health and social care experts on the condition. The posts will be paid for by the charity for up to two years, on the condition that local NHS commissioners continue funding afterwards.

Priority donations will be given to the most deprived local authorities.

These include Blackpool, Manchester, Knowsley, Liverpool, Barking and Dagenham – which have been rated as the top five disadvantaged areas by the Government.