The Social Care News Roundup 20th January 2014

Prominent social care news stories of the last week.

It’s Care Bill Week!

Two of our stories are about the Bill and another refers to the Bill.

The first Story is from The Telegraph – NHS Care for elderly and disabled quietly slashed by a third.

A story which points out that councils must be tightening their eligibility criteria for people needing care at home, because in a year when the number of over 65’s jumped by 12.5% there has been a reduction in the number of people receiving care at home by 31%.

Read the article to find out more about the cronic underfunding of social care and it’s affects so far…

The second story is from The Guardian – The Care Bill could spell financial disaster for care providers.
 

Well I’m not so sure, but I do agree that it will have a huge impact on the industry perhaps with the positive side effect of increasing the importance to care providers themselves of using quality verified customer reviews – but lets wait and see. This story is worth reading, especially for those of you that don’t know anything about the cross-subsidy of care fees.

The Third story is from the Telegraph. Ministers treating middle class elderly like ‘second class citizens’.
 

There is a human rights clause in the Care Bill which gives people the right to sue providers if they receive poor care – for self funders the government want to remove that protection – quite understandably AgeUK are up in arms!

Next a story from The Times – Business Wizards to cure the NHS

The government are looking for experienced business people from outside of the NHS to bang a few heads together. I like this story because I imagine that people in the NHS don’t like outsiders!

Our last story is titled “Medicine barcodes link to video tutorials in Leeds pilot scheme”. Sounds great and I hope we get to hear more about that story in the national press. Sadly you can’t read more here unless you are happy to login and register with Chemist and Druggist website.

Frankly I'm not, but if you are the link is here at the bottom of the page.

I'm having a few technical issues and the news will return in video form in a week or so.

Mark Sadler