Social Care - Increase Tax Or Not.

[ECCOnoob]

33 minutes ago, the_bloke said:

It'll go up each year once it gets split from NI; for all those that want more money for the NHS, well now you have your wish. The issue with the NHS and social care in general is that no matter how much money is pumped into it, it'll always need more. It's a sticking plaster.

 

Watch this space in 2024 - 'NHS needs more money' will be the headline in the Guardian, and there will be no explanations as to how it all got spent and where it went.

That I certainly would agree with.

 

Bottomless pit is an understatement.  I always find it quite interesting to do a quick google search of the words NHS crisis or NHS funding or or NHS pay strike or NHS privatisation threat or NHS brink of collapse....just to see how far back in time and how often we see the same regurgitated headlines, the same staged sad face photos from doctors and nurses, the same overdramatic narrative wording, the same hot air from talking head politicians and the same vox pops from morons in the street squawking ridiculous childish solutions like "tax the rich"

 

Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome.

 

The whole organisation is massively overblown, overused, abused, mismanaged and quite frankly overprotected.   Its needs an overhaul from top to bottom.  A complete clear out of dead wood personnel, a tightening and penalisation of patients who deliberately or neglectful  abuse their free healthcare privileges, a complete rollback of any ridiculous expensive partnership quangos or auxiliary services and stripping completely back to its original purpose of providing basic essential healthcare provisions.  

 

But of course,  God help any government even attempting to hypothesise such ideas. They would be shouted down and burried before the words could even get out their mouths.

Edited September 7, 2021 by ECCOnoob

[tinfoilhat]

34 minutes ago, ECCOnoob said:

That I certainly would agree with.

 

Bottomless pit is an understatement.  I always find it quite interesting to do a quick google search of the words NHS crisis or NHS funding or or NHS pay strike or NHS privatisation threat or NHS brink of collapse....just to see how far back in time and how often we see the same regurgitated headlines, the same staged sad face photos from doctors and nurses, the same overdramatic narrative wording, the same hot air from talking head politicians and the same vox pops from morons in the street squawking ridiculous childish solutions like "tax the rich"

 

Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome.

 

The whole organisation is massively overblown, overused, abused, mismanaged and quite frankly overprotected.   Its needs an overhaul from top to bottom.  A complete clear out of dead wood personnel, a tightening and penalisation of patients who deliberately or neglectful  abuse their free healthcare privileges, a complete rollback of any ridiculous expensive partnership quangos or auxiliary services and stripping completely back to its original purpose of providing basic essential healthcare provisions.  

 

But of course,  God help any government even attempting to hypothesise such ideas. They would be shouted down and burried before the words could even get out their mouths.

Well he isn't taxing the rich, he's taxing everyone else. Not to say things can't be improved - I bet if you ask quite a few health professionals they'd give a few ideas.

 

Basic essential healthcare provision is an odd turn of phrase though. What wouldn't you offer?

[harvey19]

It appears to me that social care will be limited to £86K but accommodation will be extra.

So if a person has to go in a care home they will still have to pay for accommodation on top of the £86K.

Or have I misunderstood ?

[Anna B]

2 hours ago, FIRETHORN1 said:

We have an ever-growing population in which people are living longer - or at least being kept alive for longer. The need for more and more social care will only increase in future. In principle, I agree that taxes need to be increased to cater for this ever growing need, but under the current system, any extra tax revenue raised would only go to line the pockets of greedy private sector contractors or would be frittered away by understaffed, inefficient, badly managed Local Councils.

 

These days, when people who need additional care - either in a residential  Care Home or in their own homes - after being discharged from hospital or becoming too infirm to look after themselves - they are just dumped on local Councils' Social Services departments. The local councils can't cope, so the people are pushed into privately run Care Homes or contracted out to privately run  Care-in-your-own- home  companies. The private companies are paid huge sums of public money  but because they are only interested in profit, they are usually understaffed, with poorly paid, poorly trained people who give an inadequate service to their clients.

 

My own view is that all social care should be provided by the Government, none of it should be hived off to the Private Sector and no-one should have to sell their home or spend their life savings to get the care they need when they are too old or too ill/disabled to look after themselves. I think the Government should set up and entirely new department - The National Social Care Service. This new service should be publicly funded and should have sole responsibility for the provision & management of all social care in  residential  Care Homes and for giving people care in their own homes.  When a hospital or GP feels a patient needs social care, they would refer them to this National Social Care Service - who would recruit and train their own staff, pay them decent wages and give them decent working conditions. The new service would also be responsible for ensuring that people being cared for in their own homes are given all the equipment and home-adaptations they need to help keep them as independent as possible - like providing wheelchairs, beds etc, or installing wheelchair ramps, upgrading bathrooms & kitchens

 

I know my idea sounds utopian and is unlikely to ever happen, but I think the only way to improve existing dire social care is not just to raise taxes and throw more money into a system that already isn't working. The provision of social care needs root-and-branch reform and a whole new way of delivering it. By all means, raise more money by increasing taxes - but the extra money needs to be spent more wisely too.

 

Far from being Utopian, that is pretty much how it used to work before Thatcher and her 'Free market economics' which required everything to be privatised and profit driven, even services where service was the bottom line and no obvious profit was forthcoming. 

There was a two tier system, where some people who could afford it went private in NHS hospitals avoiding waiting lists, but the money gained was fed back into the NHS for the benefit of all patients, so it worked well for everybody.

[Anna B]

3 minutes ago, harvey19 said:

It appears to me that social care will be limited to £86K but accommodation will be extra.

So if a person has to go in a care home they will still have to pay for accommodation on top of the £86K.

Or have I misunderstood ?

No, you haven't misunderstood. At the moment the extortionate price of residential care does not include 'bed and board.' That's extra, and in my experience the food is rubbish. 

[Baron99]

Well people now know what they are going to have to contribute from April 2022 with the money starting to filter through in 2023 but there's no point throwing money at a system that's been unfit for purposes for a good three decades.  Its the system that's at fault, the funding is a secondary issue.  

 

Savings need to be made immediately in the NHS.  A woman was on the tv the other day & described her NHS job as a 'Performance Manager'.  Not a doctor or nurse.  Like many large organisations, (sure I read somewhere that the NHS is the world's 3rd largest employer after the Chinese Red Army & the Indian Railways), I'm sure the admin side could be reduced one way or another.  Contracted  out services, which start out as competitive, until someone realises that light bulb that needs changing is going to cost you £1,000, could be taken back in-house. 

 

Also before we start chucking money at private sector residential care / nursing homes, let's get some info as to why the average, minimum weekly cost of basic  residential care in Sheffield appears to be in the region of £1,800 PER WEEK per resident. Let's see a break down & justification of such costs?   Yes, they have overheads but even a small care home with say 10 residents, that's £18,000 a week & watching a report last week stating that care home staff are on a lower hourly rate than someone working in a chip shop, the money appears not to be going on wages.  It does seem that care homes within a local geographical area, operate as a cartel, all charging the same rate?

 

The overhaul of the private care home sector has to be done, as the plan is anyone with less than £20k in assets, will have their care paid in full by the state.  I could see that care home operators seeing this as an opportunity to ramp up the charges to make even more money.   

 

The new money won't go far if its squandered from the outset. 

Edited September 7, 2021 by Baron99

[Mister M]

20 minutes ago, Anna B said:

No, you haven't misunderstood. At the moment the extortionate price of residential care does not include 'bed and board.' That's extra, and in my experience the food is rubbish. 

For years, the social care sector has been ignored by the press and politicians alike; only coming to the public's attention in gross cases, such as those at Winterbourne View; and the collapse of the Southern Cross group and Four Seasons.

I think over the coming months, the social care sector will experience scrutiny that it hasn't had before. How money is spent, what care is provided, the wages of the people in the care sector, the finances of the sector, who regulates care homes and providers etc.

 

 

 

Edited September 7, 2021 by Mister M

[harvey19]

21 minutes ago, Anna B said:

No, you haven't misunderstood. At the moment the extortionate price of residential care does not include 'bed and board.' That's extra, and in my experience the food is rubbish. 

So things haven't changed much if a person has to go in a care home.

[Flanker7]

17 minutes ago, Baron99 said:

let's get some info as to why the average, minimum weekly cost of basic  residential care in Sheffield appears to be in the region of £1,800 PER WEEK per resident.

Our S11 care home bill has just come in for September = £3680

Where do you get your numbers?

What cartel?

[Anna B]

23 minutes ago, Baron99 said:

Well people now know what they are going to have to contribute from April 2022 with the money starting to filter through in 2023 but there's no point throwing money at a system that's been unfit for purposes for a good three decades.  Its the system that's at fault, the funding is a secondary issue.  

 

Savings need to be made immediately in the NHS.  A woman was on the tv the other day & described her NHS job as a 'Performance Manager'.  Not a doctor or nurse.  Like many large organisations, (sure I read somewhere that the NHS is the world's 3rd largest employer after the Chinese Red Army & the Indian Railways), I'm sure the admin side could be reduced one way or another.  Contracted  out services, which start out as competitive, until someone realises that light bulb that needs changing is going to cost you £1,000, could be taken back in-house. 

 

Also before we start chucking money at private sector residential care / nursing homes, let's get some info as to why the average, minimum weekly cost of basic  residential care in Sheffield appears to be in the region of £1,800 PER WEEK per resident. Let's see a break down & justification of such costs?   Yes, they have overheads but even a small care home with say 10 residents, that's £18,000 a week & watching a report last week stating that care home staff are on a lower hourly rate than someone working in a chip shop, the money appears not to be going on wages.  It does seem that care homes within a local geographical area, operate as a cartel, all charging the same rate?

 

The overhaul of the private care home sector has to be done, as the plan is anyone with less than £20k in assets, will have their care paid in full by the state.  I could see that care home operators seeing this as an opportunity to ramp up the charges to make even more money.   

 

The new money won't go far if its squandered from the outset. 

Thousands of people employed in the NHS, and still no one to feed those who can't manage to feed themselves...