If you have the time and energy I would REALLY appreciate if it you could let me know if I’m made mistakes, misread something…I’ve been doing this since around 8pm yesterday and I’m still second-guessing my interpretation
but please don’t feel obliged to do so!
When I started putting the pieces together, re. overpayments, and the fact that a Paid carer or someone employed at National Living Wage would get more than double that of an unpaid carer for 51 hours of work, THAT really made my heart sink
Then realising the NHS consultation right now OMITS social care, and ‘plays’ to the misnomer that care in the community is part of the NHS or free at the point of use - THAT was a double heart-sink
Health experts welcomed the extra funding but cautioned that more investment in the NHS would be needed for patients to notice the difference. Siva Anandaciva, the chief analyst at the King’s Fund thinktank, said: “The health spending announced today is unlikely to be enough for patients to see a real improvement in the care they receive.”
There was widespread consternation that an extra £600m announced for social care was substantially less than the NHS has received, especially when care providers face extra costs from national insurance changes and minimum wage increases, exacerbating the difficult financial position they are in.
If I connect this with the NHS consultation Efficiencies and productivity in hospitals is the likely political target to validate investments because hospitals = NHS Remember me being ‘recruited to action the virtual ward’!
From the consultation Q’aire
Shift 1: moving more care from hospitals to communities
This means delivering more tests, scans, treatments and therapies nearer to where people live. This could help people lead healthier and more independent lives, reducing the likelihood of serious illness and long hospital stays. This would allow hospitals to focus on the most serious illnesses and emergencies.
More health services would be provided at places like GP clinics, pharmacies, local health centres, and in people’s homes. This may involve adapting or extending clinics, surgeries and other facilities in our neighbourhoods, so that they can provide things that are mostly delivered in hospitals at the moment.
Examples might include:
• urgent treatment for minor emergencies
• diagnostic scans and tests
• ongoing treatments and therapies.
After a test, it was decided I need a colonoscopy. Yesterday I had an appointment to talk things over and make an appointment. It was at a hospital in Dorset, not Hampshire where I live. First receptionist didn’t have all my details, although I’ve lived in the same house for nearly 50 years. Then to see the specialist nurse who told me they didn’t have all my details! I explained that I’d just given them to the receptionist, who told me they had a different system. The paperwork said I could choose where the test would be done, Bournemouth, Poole or Dorset. There is a hospital very near me which does the test, but the Dorset Team can’t refer to it. When I got home I rang the hospital near me, yes, of course they could do it, but the Bournemouth Team had to refer me directly! I had to ring then
M to ask them to ring my hospital. Later had another call. My local team used a different test, so if I would need to do that for a referral, and the consultant at my hospital wasn’t as well trained. I gave up. What would have been so quick and easy locally, especially as my eldest son lives so close he can see the hospital fron his workshop is impossible. Instead, it will be 2x£50 taxi fares and a very long walk at Royal Bournemouth Hospital!
I’ve long argued that social care and health care are a false distinction. Neither one is different, in practice, as both support health. It was at one time Labour party policy to bring the two together as one (people assume they are, because they’re the same government department but in practice they’re completely separate funding streams and organisational structures).
It’s a total nonsense, and until this is sorted out, it will remain that way.
I hope that there will be a response highlighting the impact of the budget on small care providers, GP practices and hospices
Nadra Ahmed, the executive co-chair of the National Care Association, which represents smaller and medium-sized care providers, said many members were worried about the increased costs.
“The impact on small providers, who are small businesses, is substantial,” she said. “We currently have a provider with 350 staff, where the impact will be an additional £250,000 a year. I think it has to be funded.”
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, said: “Hammering small businesses with a tax hike is the wrong choice. It will hit people’s wages and jobs, but it also risks worsening the NHS crisis by hiking costs for care providers and pushing some to the brink.
“It just shows that yet again the government seems to have forgotten about care. At the very least, the chancellor should be exempting social care from this costly jobs tax.”
and
Care homes and GPs face closure as tax hikes pose ‘existential threat’
Warning that employers’ national insurance increase could ‘fatally undermine’ Labour’s promise to cut NHS waiting lists
The NHS will be exempt from the tax rise, but GPs, hospices, social care providers and pharmacies will have to pay the extra 1.2 per cent out of their own pockets as they are run as private businesses.
Bottom line for me: Much of the chancellors budget obscures the reality that CARE is not just NHS hospitals
Bigger fears and concerns for all unpaid carers…correct that HUGE concerns given what I recently experienced IN the hospital too and Outside the hospital with Virtual wards…what will hospice care look like!
Sorry to all my forum friends I feel the need to raise awareness when ‘soundbites’ and policy FOG the real immediate impact. I know of one rural pharmacy near friends that may be affected…
Victoria, as I’m having a very sleepless night, I read your post again.
Whilst to qualify for CA you have to care for a minimum of 35 hours to qualify, some are caring for 168 hours a week, which drastically reduces the hourly rate. These are the people penalised the most.
Divide CA by 168 hours and it’s a pittance, roughly 50p an hour.
They CANNOT work because there just aren’t enough hours in the day.
Being on duty or on call with no chance of respite is a recipe for long term ill health. For the first 16 years of M’s life I had 3 full days off, in hospital having a hysterectomy.
Now, as a pensioner, I get nothing.
In theory I should be entitled to Direct Payments, when M is home, but my LA won’t pay family members although the Care Act says they can.
The Chancellor kept saying she wanted to deal with the “economically inactive” and get them back to work, that’s how carers are classed. So unfair, especially when all the day centres which might have made this possible have been closed.
We need caring to be regarded differently, as a valuable contribution to society. Changing attitudes is an essential first step!
Ensuring relatives were paid Direct Payments, in accordance with the Care Act, it would make a huge difference, Penalising thonse working up to 168 hours a week is a huge injustice!
It’s all very well raising the earned amount allowed, but in order to get that money how many extra hours a week is that?
Many carers don’t get a bean, as they are students, pensioners etc.
Thanks @bowlingbun
Totally 100% agree - changing the narrative is exactly why I write and publish my website
I used 51 hours because of the threshold minimum for CA is 35 and the new £196 is equivalent to 16 hours at National Living Wage rate. But OF course we do much much much more than 35 hours especially in a crisis when it’s one long day of caring
As you point out, the definition revolves around money, economy and productivity - still steeped in the industrial revolution definitions of Time-in-motion, mechanisation of human effort…it would be lovely to go BACK to attributing value to humans and community.
and YES there are so many people who don’t fit in the economy-definition and are not receiving care, nor money.
It’s down to terminology again. We re not workers… They say we have to Care for 35 hours a week not do Care WORK…
Without blowing my own trumpet, since Graham was taken to hospital (7 days ago now) I have ‘worked’ around 57 hours JUST in the hospital with him (more than many of the paid hospital staff do in a week). On top of that I have dealt with around 12 hours at home dealing with his personal affairs, rearranging appointments, and other general matters which he is unable to deal with himself. That’s much less than when he is at home, but MUCH more tiring because I have had to deal with so many different people and be constantly explaining who I am and why I am there. Oh yes then I have to find the time to feed myself (mostly eating ‘on the hoof’ or by the computer or phone) and have what is jokingly called a life - you know, mainly trying to get some sleep…I have not actually sat in a chair in the lounge all week and have only gone into that room three times. I am seriously just waiting til I am also in hospital because I have collapsed. I KNOW I am lucky in many ways and others struggle even more but how close ARE many of us to that breaking point where the men in white coats come to take us away for a little holiday?
Whilst hospital staff can take a sick day and cover is arranged, unpaid carers can’t. The idea that paid carers are better than family carers is nonsense too, because paid carers need telling everything, family carers know everything.
That was one wonderful moment over the weekend. ONE nurse commented to me that being there on Saturday when G was “somewhere else” helped a lot because - in her words “we don’t know Graham - YOU do and we need your knowledge to help him”. I doubt she will move up the ranks as she is TOO kind, but it meant so much to me to hear those words.
Government, and - sad to say - CUK, use the terminology that carers have to “spend” 35 hours a week caring. That’s a workaround used by the government, because if they were honest about it and used the word “work”, Carers Allowance would have to be paid at (at least) the Minimum Wage.
Carers are the only people I know who are encouraged to work on top of what is already a full time job. Funny thing…as carers we’re “economically inactive”, and yet if we find work and someone has to provide care for any of that time we’re out of the house, they are paid to do it and considered to be in employment. It’s not logical at any level.
Well put @Charlesh47 Convenient labelling to avoid appropriately supporting carers is one thing,
A second thing, there is no motivation that I’ve seen so far from this new government, to move away from the legacy of capitalising on goodwill, conscience and love of family members/friends/loved ones because that ‘saves’ the Public Purse £162billion - equal to a second NHS (reference https://www.carersuk.org/media/2d5le03c/valuing-carers-report.pdf Dr Maria Petrillo and Professor Matt Bennett).
When the government has this huge debt, that has a high interest rate of repayment an easy way to massage this reality is to quote productivity and efficiency numbers and leverage carers even more by pushing patients home with virtual wards. Because there is a public lack of understanding around the separation of NHS and social care
There are not many care homes, hospice services available around here …and the tax rise on small businesses will put these at further risk…
ohhhh SO MUCH to say on this…
emphasised textHow much per week does a hospital bed cost? It makes sound financial sense to pay a proper wage to family carers looking after someone who would otherwise be in hospital. NHS Continuing Healthcare was designed originally to enable this, something which has been conveniently forgotten!
The cost of not reforming social care will be scrutinised by MPs in a new inquiry, as the sector sits on the “brink of collapse”.
The health and social care committee said it would examine how much inaction on social care was costing the NHS and local authorities and the impact this had on patients and the public.
MPs said the “crisis” in social care had long been a “can kicked down the road”, with nearly a quarter of a million people in England waiting to have their care needs assessed by the end of the summer in 2023, according to a report from the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (Adass) published that year.
Layla Moran, chair of the HSC committee, told The Times: “Our target market here is the Treasury. Our target market is Rachel Reeves, so that in the next budget there is going to be significant investment in [social care]. But our committee will be making the case that this investment needs to be done quickly and is worth doing.”
Services that support some of England’s most vulnerable people have warned that tax increases in the budget will lead to cuts and closures that could devastate the charity sector.
Although the NHS and councils are protected from the impact of the rise in employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs) announced in Wednesday’s budget, charities that provide services say the increase means they will face “existential” financial pressures.
Family doctors and pharmacists – who provide NHS-funded services as private providers – also demanded they be exempted from the rise, saying the extra NICs costs could force a reduction in primary care services.
My brain always thinks about future support I may need…or potential LACK of it
More closures, less support for those who are sick, heavier burdens on unpaid carers