Gap between health and social care is 'no man's land' for patients, report finds
Baroness Louise Casey is leading an independent commission into social care, however it will not make its long-term recommendations until 2028.
An influential think tank has described the intersection between health and social care as a “no man’s land”, saying that patients often experience delays, confusion and gaps in support.
The King’s Fund said that by widening eligibility for publicly-funded social care it would reduce the friction when people are discharged from hospital.
This was the key recommendation from its paper, “‘No man’s land’: the experience of patients at the interface between health and social care”, published yesterday.
It said: “Across England, health and social care are sometimes spoken about as though they form a single, seamless system.
“Yet anyone who has ever tried to navigate both knows that this is far from true.
“Within both the NHS and adult social care, people encounter variation, fragmentation and overlapping boundaries.”
The issue, the King’s Fund said, was down to the NHS being free at the point of use, while adult social care is means tested and funded by local authorities.
The report said: “This mismatch between access and accountability, and between medical and social models of care, creates friction at precisely the moments when people most need seamless support.”
To respond to this the King’s Fund called for wider eligibility for adult social care.
This “would not, on its own, solve every problem at the interface, but it would significantly reduce the need to draw artificial boundaries between ‘health’ and ‘care’ for people in need”, it added.
It said the Government’s Social Care Commission, by Baroness Louise Casey, “offers a critical opportunity to confront this head-on”.
Ahead of the 2024 general election, Labour pledged to bring in a National Care Service, and brought in Baroness Casey to oversee a commission on the subject.
However, the Government has been accused of acting slowly, with the long-term recommendations potentially not coming until 2028.
Mike Padgham, chair of North Yorkshire’s Independent Care Group, who runs Saint Cecilia’s Care Home, in Scarborough, said the issue needs faster action.
He told The Yorkshire Post: “If the Government wants to make a legacy for itself, this is an opportunity to do it, because every other government has failed.
“Those reforms should come forward much faster than currently documented.
“The answer is to form a national care service, which brings the NHS and social care into one body.”
Shipley MP Anna Dixon said these delays were one of the reasons she had called for Sir Keir Starmer to stand down.
“It was clear from the election results that people do not feel as if we are delivering change in every community across the country,” she said.
“People do not feel as if Labour are on their side, and we’ve got to make people feel that we are on their side.
“In some areas, we are not making the change fast enough. What does bolder look like while still staying true to the manifesto on which the Labour Government was elected?
“A National Care Service was there in the manifesto, and at the moment we are only going to have proposals in 2028, we are not going to have actually delivered anything.
“I would be all for trying to accelerate that and start some of the building blocks for a National Care Service ahead of 2029.”