Elderly people ‘stuck’ in hospitals due to social care crisis

A BED-blocking crisis condemning elderly and disabled people to remain in hospital when they could be let home will never be resolved unless funding for adult social care is boosted, council bosses warn.

Elderly man in hospital GETTY/PIC POSED BY MODEL

The LGA is calling for extra funding to help vulnerable and elderly people with social care

The Local Government Association (LGA) said services were under severe strain and called for next month’s Budget to offer the same protection to social care as to the NHS.

Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to ring-fence the English NHS budget from spending cuts until 2020.

The LGA says extra funding is vital to give vulnerable people the support they need to live in their own homes for as long as possible.

Its chairman David Sparks blamed insufficient funding, growing demand, escalating costs and a 40 per cent cut to council budgets for the crisis.

Too many older people are being let down by a system which leaves them languishing in hospital beds

David Sparks, LGA chairman

Councils spent £14.6billion on adult social care in the past financial year – or 35 per cent of overall budgets.

Mr Sparks said: “Too many older people are being let down by a system which leaves them languishing in hospital beds while they wait for an alternative, or consigned to residential care because we lack the capacity to help them live independently.”

The warning comes months after bed it emerged blocking had reached its highest level in four years.

On one day in September last year in England more than 4,966 patients could not be discharged because of a lack of adult care, at an estimated monthly cost to the NHS of £34million. 

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