A conference in Manchester today has heard that there are over half a million people waiting for care, waiting to be assessed, waiting for care to be arranged or waiting for their reviews to happen.
Sarah McClinton, the Director for Health and Adult Services in Greenwich and president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) told the audience
I’m as angry now as I have been frustrated over the last 6 months. Clearly, if we were setting up the adult care system today, we certainly wouldn’t be starting from here.
She said that the situation also adding to the endless pressures we see with ambulances and hospitals, and adding to the pressures we see in our communities, more people requesting help with mental health and domestic abuse, 2.2 million hours of homecare couldn’t be delivered in the first quarter of this year.
“We see unpaid carers at breaking point and people unable to afford the support they need.”
“It’s now November and Winter is coming, once again. Once again, we have no certainty, no plan and increasingly little time. If we added together all the sticking plasters, we have seen over the past 10 winters, we could at least have invested in one proper bandage, and we might have started to heal the wound.”
