Broke and disabled in Tory Britain: the reality of life on one meal a day | UK cost of living crisis | The Guardian

Welfare reforms have left many disabled people effectively destitute. For them, this isn’t a cost-of-living crisis – it’s a cost-of-staying-alive crisis

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This article is so rare as usually any mention, as the article says, is depicting disability in a very dismissive and aggressive way.

Yes, government policy and the TV programmes mentioned and others that are not create the impression that people with disabilities are not worthy. Yes, there will be a few who are abusing the system, but that is true in all aspects of life, but the majority just wish to live a reasonable life and should be allowed and helped to do so.

Surely that should be a human right for everyone.

Looking after someone with a disability is far from easy, I know for I have done so for some 40 years and my own health has deteriorated in doing so.

If social care was not in such a crisis then perhaps more help would be available, but due to many years of neglect due to massive insufficient funding social care is not what it should be, even though the carers employed are doing all they can with very limited resources and undertake responsibilities far in excess of the remunerations they receive. These carers could so easily earn much more with considerably less responsibilities outside of care, but they care and wish to care, while they too have the ability to do so.

Social care is so desperately short of funding and as we now see this is seriously impacting the care in the NHS as when patients needing social care can’t be discharged from hospitals due to the social care insufficiencies. Thereby restricting more persons to enter hospitals for health care, which is then seriously affecting numbers of ambulances available to attend emergency calls.

While, there has always been some deficiencies with social care funding, this started to become much more serious with the Tory austerity cuts from 2010 and has time as gone by the deficiencies with funding to local authorities as become much more serious.

While the government is starting to make some funding available, the amounts they are giving are massively way short of what is really required in both social care services for children and adults for the elderly are only one area of social care, but in many respects, with the government and media they appear to believe that it is only care for the elderly and even there the funding is wholly insufficient.

If funding of sufficient amounts is not immediately given to social care we can be saying goodbye to social care and many, if not all areas of the NHS. so, then no care for anyone, social or health.

We desperately need a government that is prepared to listen and then immediately take the appropriate action, before it is not too late.

Let’s hope that it is not already too late, but it sure is for some.

 

Source: Broke and disabled in Tory Britain: the reality of life on one meal a day | UK cost of living crisis | The Guardian

‘My brother with Down’s Syndrome is slowly spiralling’: The severity of the social care crisis laid bare

Nearly half of social care providers in England have been forced to close part of their organisation or hand back contracts to councils due to cost pressures in the last year, i reveals

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This is the true state of Social Care in the UK and this government is not listening, but then no previous government has listened.

The closed ears of UK governments have lead to this crisis, which if anyone cared to look would have seen it coming well before 2010, but the Tory austerity cuts from then only enhanced the crisis much more and still is to this day, with no seen improvements coming from any future governments.

It is not only with Down’s Syndrome but in every aspect of social care both childrens and adults. It requires an immediate increase, of at least, £12 billion to reverse the decline, but to enable continued sustainability much more in all the coming years. For if it is not done we can say goodbye to social care and following very closely the NHS as well. For without a sustained and credible social care the NHS crisis will continue to get worse no matter how much is given to the NHS.

Social care is the immediate priority and then the NHS. both are in severe deficit of staff, social care more so than the NHS. While NHS staff salaries need to be increased in-line with inflation, all social care not only require an inflation increase in salaries but a massive upgrading from the forthcoming April 2023 £11 per hour to around £13/14 this year and £15 next year. To do nothing more than the increase to £11 of the National Liviving Wage is effectively completely saying social care can end to any degree.

Human rights will be ignored and safeguarding alerts will escalate and everyone will blame social workers when the real culprits will be the government.

 

Source: ‘My brother with Down’s Syndrome is slowly spiralling’: The severity of the social care crisis laid bare

Systems for challenging adult social care decisions failing, warns rights regulator – Community Care

The system for challenging councils on their adult social care decisions is failing those who need it, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has warned. Inaccessible information, “complicated and stressful processes” and a lack of advocacy were undermining people’s ability to challenge local authority decisions in England and Wales, the rights regulator found, on […]

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Mostly I agree with the points raised and certainly more needs to be done to make the processes more equitable and so much easier to go through. But, in many instances it is down to trust, for a good proportion of the population are scared of very large organisations and certainly those who appear to have great power, which Local Authorities, (LAs) certainly have.

Over the years I have submitted many complaints to my LA, and in the main my complaints have been upheld, but the process can be very long, so is very time consuming and exceedingly stressful.

I was caring for my daughter for going on 40 years and over time became much more knowledgeable about processes and certainly what mine and my daughters Rights were.

I studied the legislations including the Care Act 2014 and I became aware that a significant number of LA staff were not very aware of what was in the Care Act, and also became aware that in some instances the Care Act was being ignored to some extent, either by design or lack of knowledge.

That being said, in one Formal complaint, I became so incensed about the complaints procedure that I added to the complaint , a complaint about the procedure.

Only once have I progressed a complaint to the Ombudsman, but was told I submitted to them too late, even though this was due to the LA taking over a year to forward to me their final response. To have a deadline to submit, to me is totally wrong and does not take into account the stresses encountered by persons with needs and their carers which in many instances can be considerable.

Also, the Ombudsman only takes into account whether the processes were fully followed and not the right or wrongs of any decision, which again needs to be rectified. So does the opportunities to raise a Judicial Review, which over the years has been made much more difficult due to Governments making it more difficult for persons to obtain Legal Aid to fund the process, having to rely on finding a law firm to take on by ‘No Win, No Fee’.

A ‘no win, no fee’ agreement, also known as a conditional fee agreement, is an arrangement between you and your personal injury solicitor. It means that if your compensation claim is unsuccessful, you will not have to pay a contingency fee for your lawyer’s services.
While the Care Quality Commission is being given more powers, it should be given much more including the provision to investigate complaints.

I had the ability to understand, over the years, the process and have the strength and ability to go through the processes. At times having to explain my Right to complain by any media I wished to use, being in writing, by telephone, by email, etc and not as I was informed on occasions only on their complaint form and at times advised I would have to go through a more senior staff member, which again is untrue. So, I have had to talk through some LA staff what the process is.

Over the years I have become so much more involved with my LA, in that they call upon me to help them in various ways, as they wish to avail themselves of my ‘Expert by Experience’ knowledge and over the years have seen some improvements to some degree.

I am now 73 and took early retirement at 62 due to health, but this gave me more opportunities to be involved and I am now a regular contributor to many areas within my LA. But I have over the years become involved with my local Healthwatch, Health Authorities and many over local voluntary and Charity organisations.

I do appreciate that many others will not have the time, the strength and other requirements to do what I have and continue to do, so I do hope by doing what I do I am helping to improve what is there not only for my own family, but for many others too.

Unfortunately, over the last few years I had to deal with the death of my wife in September 2020 and my dear daughter in October 2022 and my involvement in the areas above have in many ways been helping me to deal with these losses and I have received many supporting comments from persons I am in contact with in my LA and other organisations.

To me complaining and then being involved in other ways has been, in most respects, good for me and my family and have been able to become much closer to the processes which are not easy to deal with and to know the people I am dealing with. This will not be possible for most of the population, but I do hope in time more improvements will be made.

The largest of these is funding, which since 2010 for all LAs has been well short of what is required due to Tory austerity cuts and really needs to be reversed. The government said the cuts would be absorbed through saving being made, well in most respects there were not opportunities to make saving, unless cuts to services were made, which there has been to many, if not all services, leading to great deterioration to the lives of many.

This Government and all future governments need to ensure that funding cuts are not the way forward and lead to much more deprivation and many more inequalities.

 

Source: Systems for challenging adult social care decisions failing, warns rights regulator – Community Care

DfE pledges action on ‘excessive’ workload pressures for children’s social workers – Community Care

The government has pledged action to tackle “excessive” workload pressures on council children’s social workers as part of its response to the care review. The Department for Education said it would set up a national workload action group to identify solutions to “unnecessary” pressures on practitioners, while also promising steps to reduce the burden of […]

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Some good intentions, but I will believe it more when I see actions and even more so appropriate actions, for Government involvement so far as not been that encouraging, perhaps, even more discouraging.

For none of this will be possible without much more funding, which we see this government is not prepared to do and is claiming that the current climate is the reason. But that climate in most areas has been caused by government inactions or inappropriate actions and not by Local Authorities (LAs) and certainly not the workers within those authorities.

The years since 2010 with the introduction of Tory Austerity cuts are to be blamed to a large extent, but also the total inability for all governments to look after social care and even education.

The austerity cuts were supposed to be funded by making savings, but in effect very little savings were there to be made and have been and are being funded by extensive cuts to many services, if not all LA services, by virtually all LAs, if not all of them and with some, so much more so than others.

LAs have been bearing the brunt of all these problems, when in many instances the blame should have been at the doors of the Tory Governments and some others before.

While I so hope all the problems will be solved, I feel not many will be, if any.

 

Source: DfE pledges action on ‘excessive’ workload pressures for children’s social workers – Community Care

Decade of neglect means NHS unable to tackle care backlog, report says | NHS | The Guardian

Exclusive: Government-commissioned paper pinpoints budget squeeze as key reason for service’s loss of capacity

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Yes, austerity cuts are the blame for many problems in the UK and not just the NHS.

However, all governments since 1948 are to blame for the crisis in Social Care, but austerity cuts just made the crisis much worse.

Until the crisis in Social Care has been solved, the NHS will always be worse off, but no Government sees this problem.

So solve Social Care and part of the NHS problem will be overcome, provided no more Governments restrict finance to both Social Care and the NHS.

 

Source: Decade of neglect means NHS unable to tackle care backlog, report says | NHS | The Guardian

The Family Of Six In A One-Bedroom Flat Due To Inaccessible Social Housing

The housing market in the UK is far from good and even more so in respect of Social housing for many reasons

1. social housing stock has, over many hyears been reduced through the ‘right to buy’ scheme where social housing tennents were given the right to buy on a much lower price than the current market value dependent on how long the family have resided in the property, but Local Authorities, (LAs) were not allowed to use the resulting income from the sale of the property to buld replacement stocks

2. UK social housing stock is generally old, so not as acceptable to conditions of today, especially with regards to accessiblity and other aspects in regards to disabilities, but also many others such as use of energy and suitability of current climates

3. lack of available funding at LAs due to, at least 10 years of austerity cuts to Government grants to LAs, plus increased costs related to COVID, in a very changing market. This is not only reflecting on social housing, but many other LA resourses such as, education, social care and many others

4. too long timescales toprovide required adjustments and alterations and adaptations

5. state of repair of much social housing as repairs have not been done, effectively, sufficiently and within required timescales, leading t many social housing properties to be in a poor state causing many areas relating to causes of very poor health of tennents residing in them

When a family needs improved and more suitable accomodation is it required immediately and not in a year or years time as to do so puts more stress, and inconvenience on alrady very stressful and inconvenienced families so adding much more to problems within their lives.

This was not satisfactory years ago and even more so now, but this Government and may previous Governments have and are being shown to behave like the ‘3 wise monkeys‘, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’.

This is a major crisis, in addition to all the other major crisises within the UK and should never have been allowed to occur, but mismanagement or, in reality, no management by UK Governments for more years than there should have been, out of sight, out of mind, except for those of the population who are directly concerned, but Governments who are not and never will be concerned.

Same Difference

A family of six have been living in a one-bedroom flat because the social housing they were assigned was inaccessible to their disabled child.

Seven-year-old Joel Verala uses a wheelchair and is fed by a tube due to quadriplegic cerebral palsy.

The house has three bedrooms but the family have been told the adaptations he needs could take a year.

Croydon Council said it had always informed the family the work would take “some months to complete”.

Joel’s mum, Souskay Verala, describes her son as a “happy boy” on the BBC Access All podcast.

“He likes stories read to him, he loves his siblings playing around him, as well as walks outside,” she says.

The family – Souskay, her husband and three children – were excited to be offered the three-bedroom council property in March having lived in a small flat for the previous six years.

But, though the…

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Odds stacked against it: how social care struggles to compete with supermarkets on pay | The King’s Fund

Pay is a key reason for the social care workforce crisis, says Simon Bottery. Nearly 400,000 careworkers would be financially better off working in supermarkets.

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This articles states the state of how it is for care workers, especially on pay compared to supermarkets a hospital support workers. Pay for care workers is one of the major reasons why there is a distinct shortage of care workers in the UK. This leads to lack of capacity in social care, so many persons in need of social care are unable to receive it, thereby causing many health inequalities, thus causing more impact on the NHS, with conscequences of increasing the crisis in the NHS. This is due to more persons needing access to the NHS due to insufficiencies of social care and so hospital admission are increasing. However, the lack of social care is also affecting discharges, as where a patient will need home care of temporary care home access, there is an insufficiency, hence the discharge is delayed, thereby causing ‘bed blocking’. This then means A&E can’t move patients to wards due to beds unavailable, which in turn means ambulances can’t move patients in ambulances into A&E due to no A&E being full. This then means there is a shortages of ambulances to take new patients to hospitals causing ambulance staff and patients at home great concern that the required help is being considerably delayed, causing not only the distress to patients, but further increasing deteriorations to their health and in a number of instances their deaths.

In all of this the blame is put on hospitals, A&E and ambulances, when the real blame on on non-listening and inactive Governments, being the current and all past Governments.

Put the accountability where it should be on the Government and the respective Government Ministers.

Duty of care is exceedingly important and hospitals, A&E and ambulances are doing all they can and maybe more, but this Government and all previous Governments have not taken on board their own Duty of Care, thus creating many safeguarding concerns which have to be dealt wit, even though there is the insufficiency of funding,, but safeguarding is a main priority and is first for funding. So, the lack of funding resources is being further depleated due to Government inaction and apparent non-concern.

Austerity cuts from 2010 are a major reason why Local authirities are not able to fund social care as it needs to be, which this and previous Government made the austerity cuts and will not reverse them, which is needed immediately and much more.

The deaths related to COVID were monitored, where is the monitoring of deaths from lack of social care, whic h will be far greater than from COVID.

This is abuse of Government power and a dereliction of human rights.

Source: Odds stacked against it: how social care struggles to compete with supermarkets on pay | The King’s Fund

There’s a simple way to fight the cost of living emergency: a £15 an hour minimum wage | Nadia Whittome | The Guardian

Opponents say this will lead to a wage-price spiral – but that’s an argument that’s stuck in the 1970s, says Labour MP Nadia Whittome

 

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I do agree that the minimum wage should be around £15 per hour, but not for other salaries to be increased in the same ratio as this would lead to a wages spiral.

But in saying it should be £15 per hour, this will not be a major problem for many industries, especially multi-nationals, but it will be for charities and certainly the care profession.

The care profession has been starved of finance for way too long, well before 2010, when austerity measures were introduced, but these measures made the finance much worse. So the Government needs to finance Local Authorities much better and return all the losses they endured through the austerity cuts.

As for charities, with all the problems with the cost of living, donations to charities have been considerably reduced, meaning many charities are having to decide whether they can continue let alone afford a minimum wage of £15 per hour. Without charities the gaps caused by lack of statutory services will only get greater thereby causing even more difficulties for the vulnerable that charities look after.

Also Chief Executives of industry needs to have their salaries capped so they are not earning more 10/15% more than their lowest earning employee.

Source: There’s a simple way to fight the cost of living emergency: a £15 an hour minimum wage | Nadia Whittome | The Guardian

Austerity in England linked to more than 50,000 extra deaths in five years | Public sector cuts | The Guardian

Researchers looked at 2010-2015 when Cameron cuts to NHS and social care were starting to bite

 

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This was inevitable, as the austerity cuts made Local Authorities and Health Authorities to make savings due to the cuts where savings could not realistically be made, so essential services were being run on a ‘shoe string’ and then the next and next and next, etc, meant that the shoe string was getting shorter and shorter.

If you had money then the cuts really did not touch you greatly, but for the masses who don’t have money, many only having an income which is just sufficient and with some not even sufficient, it touched them greatly.

So for those you could least afford it suffered the worst and are still doing so. The Prim e Minister Boris Johnson talks about leveling up, but he keeps saying this but has no idea what it means. For to level up the resources which have been taken away since 2010 need to be returned and then more. For even in 2010 the levels were not correct, and many were below the levels. To put right money needs to be invested in all areas which are insufficient and it will not be cheap.

A start would be to fund Social Care and then health so that all you need care can reasonably get it without having to think where the money is coming from. For Social Care needs to be funded just as the NHS is thereby making it free on the point of delivery, which it should always have been.

This was a major mistake in 1948 for then Social Care and health should have been looked at as one and be managed together, with public health included.

As it was health was looked after, but not social care, even though they were inter-related.

So, the paltry amounts that the Prime Minister announced some weeks ago fell way short of what is actually required and social care will by doing so will always be the poor relation as care services go.

So due to insufficient funding deaths will continue to soar due to the severe lack of care services.

 

Source: Austerity in England linked to more than 50,000 extra deaths in five years | Public sector cuts | The Guardian

Council proposes to increase social worker caseloads to help address financial crisis| Community Care

The Government is wrong again for it is totally inappropriate for local government secretary Robert Jenrick to say the the authority had been “entirely irresponsible with their spending and investments”.

For it is the Government who are entirely irresponsible with their funding of not just Croydon, but all Local Authorities (LAs).

The funding of Social Care has never been sufficiently funded, even before 1970, when LAs were made responsible for all Social Care and the 10 years of austerity cuts only compounded this and then the additional costs related to COVID-19 made a very bad situation even worse.

Yes, the Government has provided some extra funding for COVID-19 costs incurred, but again the Government funding fell way short of what is required.

We all wonder what this Government is good at, well they are certainly good at getting things wrong, in fact on this they are exceptional, something they have fully mastered.

 

Source: Council proposes to increase social worker caseloads to help address financial crisis | Community Care