The care sector needs support not demoralising attacks

ANOTHER day, another damning report on the current state of social care. This week it is condemnation of dementia care, last week it was a sweeping generalisation from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) that care is “not good enough at the moment”.

If we continue to batter social care in this way, and to sap what little morale there is left in this cash-starved sector, then believe me the situation is going to get a whole lot worse.

We know that all of us – CQC, government, commissioners 
and providers – all have work 
to do in improving the care we offer older and vulnerable 
adults, as it isn’t perfect at the moment.

But there is an awful lot of excellent care out there provided by caring and compassionate people, all year round, that 
goes unrecognised and unrewarded.

Instead of relentlessly aiming its fire on social care providers – who are going through their toughest ever period – the CQC should be pressing the Government to put more 
money into social care through a fairer apportioning of NHS funding.

Money spent on social care in people’s homes and residential homes avoids expensive hospital care later.

At the moment, the financial squeeze means less and less money being spent on care with fewer people receiving it and standards inevitably falling.

If we don’t address this, and address it soon, then the growing perception out there about the quality of social care will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you tell people often enough that air crashes happen, then people stop flying.

If you tell them there is salmonella in eggs, they stop eating eggs.

Keep saying social care is poor – and never mentioning that actually, most of it is very good, and people will stop using it and then we will be in a very sorry mess.

From: Nigel F Boddy, Fife Road, Darlington.

WALK in centres are to get a new name and be called Emergency Departments. A&E departments will be Major Emergency Departments. Perhaps the faceless bureaucrats in London think we won’t notice the difference if they rename them.

This plan must be stopped or A&Es all over the place will be shut down. According to a published Freedom of Information Act request, there were 181 A&Es in 2012.