Social care is in the spotlight

Adult social care is still a postcode lottery, with Lincolnshire having one of the highest death rates among those waiting for help.

Figures released this week show that 79 people in the county died while on a waiting list for care.
And while nationally some people are assessed within a day or two, others wait more than a month, according to the statistics released by Shared Data and BBC Wales.
The average wait for an initial assessment for adult social care in Lincolnshire dropped to nine days in 2022/23, from an average 11 weeks in the previous year.
But the most recent figures also show that 79 people died while waiting. Lincolnshire is in the top five of authorities (who responded)in the country for the number of deaths.
“Here in Lincolnshire we have made strenuous efforts over the last 12 to 18 months to address backlogs in which social care are involved. Those efforts are beginning to make a difference so that currently in Lincolnshire we have very few people waiting for assessments or for reviews of care, including those looking for occupational therapy support,” said Glen Garrod, executive director of Adult Care and Community Wellbeing for Lincolnshire.
“For the last few years both the NHS and social care across England have experienced significant pressures on their systems. The NHS has seen a backlog of seven million plus procedures, while in 2022 there were well over 500,000 people waiting for packages of support in social care nationally. Figures report a reduction on social care delays but it is still a significant number.”
Freedom of Information requests were sent to every local authority in the country asking two sets of questions.
The first related to how many domiciliary care contracts had been handed back over the two-year period (none in Lincolnshire).
The second related to waiting times for an initial care assessment and how long they waited for a care package to start after the assessment.
Of the 211 authorities asked, only 83 had the data that could be retrieved under the Freedom of Information Act but more than half could give at least a partial response.
Lincolnshire gave a full response to the request.
In 2021/22 the longest individual wait for an assessment for adult social care was 616 days. In 2022/23 the figure was 95 days.
The figure for the longest wait for care to start after the assessment in 2021/22 was 617 days and in 2022/23 115 days.
Neither Norfolk nor Cambridgeshire responded with data.
Birmingham had the highest number of deaths while waiting, at 175, and The Wirral had 108, Leicester 101 and Bournemouth 82 ahead of Lincolnshire’s 79 for the financial year 2022/23.

‘Postcode’ lottery still remains

Nationally, the figures show that at least 1,300 people died while waiting for a care package to start during the last financial year.
The news comes more than ten years after a crucial report found the sector was a ‘postcode lottery’ for provision.
There are still large disparities between the best and worst performances.
In one council in Wales, the average person waited more than 100 days just to be assessed and then a further ten weeks for that support to start. Some local authorities in the UK are assessing on the same day although the average wait is over a month in a third of the country.
The Department for Health and Social Care said it was investing £7.5 billion into social care.
But more than 13,000 home care packages were handed-back to councils over the last two years, mostly because companies didn’t have the staff to continue them.
Councils are responsible for providing social care and it is now 12 years since the Dilnot Commission put forward proposals to end the ‘postcode lottery’ of provision.
In order to receive funding for a care package, people have to be assessed and then if deemed eligible, a placement – either residential or domiciliary care, can be instigated.
The council pays all or part of that package depending on a means test.
Care companies have long argued that council-funding is not enough to cover the contract.
In 2021/22 a person waited for 1,419 days in Oldham for an initial assessment.
In 2022/23 Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole had an individual wait of 1,419 days.
Some authorities said extreme waits cold be explained because children in care are often referred in advance of their 18th birthday.