Local Government Association: Councils respond to report on delayed discharges

25 Jul 2016 03:56 PM

Responding to the Public Accounts Committee's report on delays in discharging older patients from hospital, the LGA's Portfolio Holder for Community Wellbeing, Cllr Izzi Seccombe, said:

"No one's elderly parent, grandparents or friends should be left unnecessarily in a hospital bed, when they could be treated in the comfort and dignity of their own home.

"What is clear is that this is no longer just a winter pressure but is now a whole year challenge to ensure that the entire health and social care system is able to cope with the increased demand on the NHS.

"Getting people out of hospital more quickly and back living at home will only work properly if councils get enough resource throughout the whole year to properly fund adequate provision of care services.

"The underfunding of adult social care and the introduction of the National Living Wage is putting the provider market under significant strain, which as the Committee's report helpfully recognises, is making it more difficult to discharge people from hospital and into care.

"Councils are absolutely committed to reducing the level of delayed transfers of care from the NHS and in the vast majority of areas are working with their local health partners to help reduce pressures on the NHS.

"While measures announced late last year for social care go some way to addressing the problems facing adult social care funding, concerns remain that future years will still be extremely challenging, particularly until 2018.

"That is why the LGA continues to call for £700 million of the funding earmarked for social care through the Better Care Fund by the end of the decade to be brought forward now, to ease the severe strain on services supporting the elderly and vulnerable."

Contact

David Mills
020 7664 3200
david.mills@local.gov.uk