However, Sarah Pickup, the new president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, said changes in England would still be years away.Instead, she urged councils to look at new ways of providing services. In an interview with the BBC, she said the key was to end the traditional assumption that long-term social care support was inevitable as people aged.
Mrs Pickup cited the success her council, Hertfordshire, had had in helping to avoid that spiral of decline by offering intensive, short-term support following problems such as broken hips and stroke. The county has been running an enablement service for the past few years which offers the elderly six-week stints of rehabilitation. She acknowledged that such opportunities were not the "solution to the problem in its entirety" as the system was still under funded and in need of reform. She also warned any reform of the system was still a "way off", pointing out any new funding arrangements would have to wait until the next Spending Review period which is three years away.
Her comments come as campaigners have been upping the pressure on government.This week Age UK and the British Geriatrics Society released a joint briefing paper warning that the elderly were being "catastrophically let down". The two groups pointed out that councils had been increasingly cutting back on the services they provide so that there were now an estimated 800,000 people with care needs who were not getting any support.
No comments:
Post a Comment