More than half a billion pounds to help people return home from hospital.• £588 million will provide up to 6 weeks of funded care and support for people being discharged from hospital
• Funding could pay for additional support including domiciliary care, community nursing services or care home costs
• Assessments for those needing funded long-term care or support to resume from September
People needing additional follow-on care after being discharged from hospital – including older people and those with disabilities – will be supported by a £588 million fund to cover adult social care or the immediate costs of care in their own home.
From 1 September, the NHS will be able to access the funding in order to provide up to 6 weeks of additional support so people can receive ongoing help with their recovery and rehabilitation after they leave hospital. This could include support in their home or access to services such as physiotherapy.
NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC) assessments will also restart from September ensuring those with complex health needs can continue to access the care they need for free.
Health and Social Care Secretary, Matt Hancock, said:
“We know for the majority of people the road to recovery can be quicker when they receive care and support in the comfort of their own home.
“This funding will help ensure people can be safely discharged from hospital knowing they will get the vital follow-on care they need to recover fully from treatment.
“We’re also making sure those with complex health needs continue to receive the best support possible in the community.”
Most people will be discharged back to their homes, however, it is anticipated that a very small proportion will need, and benefit from, short or long term residential, nursing home or hospice care.
It remains the case that no-one should be discharged from hospital directly to a care home without the involvement of the local authority and that all patients are required to be tested prior to discharge to a care home. No care home should be forced to admit an existing or new resident who has tested positive for coronavirus if the home would be unable to cope with the impact of their illness.
Cllr Paulette Hamilton, Vice Chair of the Local Government Association’s Community Wellbeing Board, said:
“We are pleased to see this further injection of funding to ensure that people can leave hospital as soon as is safe and return home wherever possible. We are also reassured by the commitment that no one will go into a care home without having been tested for the virus. Local government has asked for these commitments and will continue to play a key role in making them happen.”
New guidance has been published to help hospitals safely discharge patients into the appropriate setting to maximise their independence and ensure they can remain in their own homes as much as possible.
A comprehensive care and health assessment for any ongoing care needs, including determining funding eligibility, will take place within the first 6 weeks following discharge to make sure individuals have the support they need.
The funding can also be used for urgent community response support to prevent someone being admitted to hospital. This can include providing urgent domiciliary care or nursing support, like basic wound care, in someone’s own home, rather than in hospital.
Case managers will ensure people are discharged safely, on time and that they have full information and advice about what is happening. This includes how individuals’ needs will be assessed and any follow-up support that may be required. This approach applies to anyone discharged from NHS community and acute beds.
The funding is part of the £3 billion provided to protect and prepare health and social care in the event of a second peak of Covid-19 during winter and follows £1.3 billion funding made available via the NHS to support the discharge process in March.
The government has expanded the ONS infection survey to provide extensive, weekly data on the spread of infection, supporting rapid testing and diagnosis of COVID-19 both nationally and in areas of concern.
While this funding is welcome, it is a mire ‘drop in the ocean’ of the funding that is really needed to ‘Solve the crisis in Social Care, as my petition shows, https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/solve-the-crisis-in-social-care
More information at https://www.dropbox.com/s/m5yqkrw9y7u80ou/Petition%20-%20Solve%20the%20crisis%20in%20Social%20Care%20.docx?dl=0
This crisis has been evolving for many years, even well before the introduction of austerity cuts, but these cuts increased the crisis as did COVID-19.
So as the addition money is welcome it is being used in an area already in a serious crisis.
To ensure that this money is used to its full potential the crisis itself needs to be solved and this will not be done over night.
While, due to inefficient care assessments being done for many years, as instead of calculating funding for a care package that is really needed, the Local Authorities have only been calculating funding on which they believe can actually be delivered due to the shortfall in funding. This then produced a false figure on what is actually required.
So, this new figure could be swallowed into the shortfall.
This Government needs to, urgently, provide the required funding, something many previous Government have either totally ignored or passed in down the line to do at a later date. That later date has already been passed and so this funding is urgently required.
This Government has been funding many areas, like there was no tomorrow and the funding was required, but it is also required for Social Care, an area which can wait no longer.
For Social Care to be there for all who need it, action has to be taken like yesterday, for tomorrow could well be too late and if it is there will be no Social Care to speak of.
Those outside Social Care could well say so what, but that is because they see no need for Social Care and they do not require it, but sooner than later they may do and when they do it will not be there.
So I implore you to support this petition, https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/solve-the-crisis-in-social-care and then share it.
For then and only then will it be possible to put these addition funding streams to good use.