Now act over social care and don’t leave it to chance – The Yorkshire Post says

Without the country generating revenue for the Exchequer, there will be even less money to spend on a sector already ignored for too long.

Now a national outcry over shortages of PPE equipment has culminated with confirmation that care homes have witnessed 5,890 deaths related to Covid-19, and that this figure has virtually doubled in the past week.

Perhaps now, with almost four times as many people dying in care homes as usual at this time of year, politicians will realise that the NHS is, in fact, a national care service where provision of services in local communities matters as much as funding for those major hospitals that have responded so heroically.

Yet it will also require difficult decisions to be taken about funding – should taxes be increased, and how, to pay for health and care costs at a time when the country will be attempting to bounce back from its sharpest slump in post-war history?

And then there is society’s duty towards the army of unpaid carers who, again, are working selflessly, and with inadequate recognition, to mask the cuts to local government spending which had left the social care sector on the brink of a financial meltdown before Covid-19 was detected.

As such, the question is one that this newspaper has already posted repeatedly and now does so again at a time of national crisis: just what will it take for health and social care to be fully integrated?

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

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Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson

Editor