NINETY each day
NINETY sick and vulnerable people die every day while waiting for social care, figures reveal. In 2017/18, 32,115 sick and vulnerable people died before receiving a care package and experts say cases of vulnerable people waiting a year or more for social care assessments are increasing.
The NHS Digital figures come as experts and MPs express anger that a parliamentary discussion paper outlining long-term care system reform has been delayed five times, including a postponed pre-Christmas publication this month.
Shadow social care minister Barbara Keeley said: “This is the grim and horrifying extent of the social care crisis: vulnerable people are dying needlessly while waiting for care.
“People in need of care need action now.”
She blamed government saying: “There is less money for social care – that means fewer packages, despite ever-growing demand.
“While Tory ministers delay a funding solution to this crisis by shelving publication of their unnecessary Green Paper, more vulnerable people will die waiting for vital care.”
Sick and elderly people trapped in NHS wards due to lack of social care at home cost the NHS £289,140,954 a year, equivalent to £550 a minute.
Meanwhile the number of pensioners receiving social care, which is funded by local authorities, fell by more than 18 per cent in the past three years, despite increased demand.
The figures highlight the reality of the social care crisis with record numbers missing out on potentially life-saving help with tasks such as getting out of bed, eating, washing, wound care, taking medicine and dressing.
Age UK research found that between 2009/10 and 2016/17, average social care spending per adult fell by 13 per cent, from £439 to £379.
And an estimated 400,000 fewer older people received social care as the criteria for being eligible tightened amid insufficient resources.
The lack of resources is having a devastating impact, even on those who do receive a care package.
Many disabled and sick people wait hours for carers to help with daily needs and when they do arrive they often do not have enough time to carry cuts, out crucial and basic tasks. We spoke to carers and charities and discovered cases of neglect, including:
Frail and elderly people often being fed the same simple and quick-to-make foods every day, such as beans on toast or macaroni cheese, as carers do not have time to cook proper meals.
People are left sleeping most of the day and night in armchairs or on sofas because two carers are necessary to lift or hoist a disabled person to a bedroom and often only one – or none – is available.
Vulnerable elderly are not washed regularly. One woman in her 70s who had become paralysed down her right side did not have her hair washed for more than six months.
Frail and elderly people who need help to walk fall and hurt themselves when they try to take themselves to the toilet due to lengthy waits – sometimes leading to injury and hospital treatment.
A severely disabled 90-year-old man spent more than 18 hours in bed because there were not enough carers to look after him.
A woman in her early 90s did not have her infected ulcers dressed, which left her in agony. She was eventually admitted to hospital with sepsis after the infection spread to her blood.
EILEEN CHUBB, director and founder of the charity Compassion in Care, said: “Frail and elderly people are left in unsafe situations. Staff are asked to do the impossible in minimum time and it cannot be done.
“Can you imagine what it is like sitting in a chair, on your own, possibly in your own waste, thirsty or hungry, waiting hour after hour every day of your life for someone to come and give you a drink?
“And the carers who do care and blow the whistle are pushed out of their jobs for doing so.
“These people have contributed to society, paid taxes all their lives and they should be cared for.”
Ian Hudspeth, chairman of the Local Government Association’s community wellbeing board, said: “The scale of the overall funding picture for local government as a whole means adult