Cutting investment in the social care workforce will undermine the NHS recovery plan

A major societal concern of our time is making health and social care systems fit to meet the needs of people with long term conditions, frailty, and disability. In the UK, during 2022, it was estimated that nearly 27 000 excess deaths occurred because of systemic pressures on NHS emergency departments.1 But emergency departments were the canary in the coalmine, indicating much wider system failure across primary and secondary health and social care. In December 2022 around 10% of acute hospital beds were occupied by patients who were designated as ready to leave hospital, amounting to over 13 000 people a day.2Most of the people stuck in the system had care needs characterised by the complexity that accompanies frailty, disability, and multimorbidity. These people were not universally old, but the pressures of our ageing population, including a predicted doubling of those with four or more multi-morbid conditions by 2035,3 will…
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