Older people 'being let down' across Wales

At least 7 people died in Powys whilst waiting for a social care package to start during the last financial year.

That is according to a new study by the Shared Data Unit and BBC Wales looking into the extent of the social care crisis in the UK.

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More than a decade after a crucial report found the sector had become a “postcode lottery” of provision, the study finds large disparities still exist.

In Powys, the median wait for an initial assessment in the last financial year was around 33 days, whilst the longest an individual had to wait for an initial assessment was 195 days. The median wait time to start a care package in Powys was 17 days and the longest wait for a package to commence was 273 days.

This is an improvement on the previous financial year (2021-22) where the median wait for an initial assessment was 46 days and the longest an individual had to wait for an initial assessment was 458 days.

It is now 12 years since the Dilnot commission put forward proposals to end the “postcode lottery” of care provision in the UK.

As part of a wide-ranging study, the Shared Data Unit also found evidence of a domiciliary care system - where people receive help in their own home - in trouble. More than 13,000 home-care packages across the UK were handed back to councils over the past two years - largely because companies lacked the staffing capacity to fulfil them.

Age UK said this was leaving “substantial numbers of older people” experiencing disrupted care,  which it said was “distressing”. 

The result of delays across the system, it said, was leaving older people dying “before ever receiving the help they need.”

But the National Care Association (NCA) and the Local Government Association (LGA) said the system was struggling through years of under-investment.

Caroline Abrahams, Charity director at Age UK said:

"It's valuable to see all this data pulled together and it tells a pretty consistent story: that of a care system struggling to meet growing levels of need overall, but one which is doing better in some parts of the country compared to others. The extent of the postcode lottery the data reveals is unacceptably large, because it means your chances of getting a timely care assessment, for example, vary enormously according to where you live, and that's just not fair on all those losing out, some of whom are sadly dying before ever receiving the help they need."

"None of these findings are surprising to us at Age UK and they echo what we hear from older people all the time. Too many are finding it impossible to secure the good, reliable social care they need and the root causes are insufficient money and staff in the care system. These are problems only Government can solve and until they take decisive action to reform and invest in social care it's hard to see these figures improving. Indeed, in the face of an ageing population they are likely to get worse."