Suggested council tax increase to pay for Social care?

You can shove that idea you bunch of pansies! The problem of NHS underfunding, including social care can be wiped out with a 1p increase in National Insurance contributions. Yet once again the Tories want to pass the buck to local councils to throttle their citizens even more...

Suggested council tax increase to pay for Social care

On the news earlier, ask yourself why didn't the CCG suggest this in their contribution to the STP?

Instead, the CCGs rushed ahead claiming they would find a way but completely failed to say HOW they would solve the problem of pensioners stuck in hospital with no alternative out-of-hospital care on discharge.

Here's what the Chorley & South Ribble CCG want to do, even though they have no idea how to do it....from their Local Devlivery Plan (LDP) i.e. their contribution to the STP...

Outcome 3: Reducing the amount of time people spend avoidably in hospital through better and more integrated care in the community, outside of hospital – this means ensuring that alternative care is available so that fewer people have to go into hospital
Outcome 4: Increasing the proportion of older people living independently at home following discharge from hospital – this means ensuring that alternative care is available to support older people so that they can leave hospital sooner

NO ALTERNATIVE

So how do they 'ensure' alternative care is available if social care is already in crisis?
Integrated care has been a mantra for years yet like other areas its never had enough funding, and it certainly won't solve hospital overcrowding.

Indeed, the hospital trust board have already agreed to new care models, as long as it gets then out of deficit they don't seem to give 2 hoots... from page 9 of CCG Local Delivery Plan (LDP)...

"We [CCG] anticipate that once the models of care have been agreed and sized, and after any required consultation, that Lancashire Teaching Hospital will then start a process of modernising its hospital estate to ensure that it is efficient and fit for the future".

"By 2020/21 we plan to have moved away from a reactive hospital based-system of unplanned care, to preventative, anticipatory, whole person approach to care."

By its very nature a hospital is a reactive based system since it's never possible to predict accidents or when an emergency arises. To move to preventative whole-person simply means moving to an insurance-based system for patients with chronic conditions. The payment plan will initially be 'free' under what's called a 'personal health budget' (PHB). But as more services are lost from the NHS these will need to be obtained via a 'top-up' fee on the PHB.

So briefly....page 18

"The health economy is agreed that this Acute model of care will look different to its current and that it may well reduce in size from its current form. We are committed to shifting resources towards interventions that prevent ill health and reduce demand for hospital and residential care services."

Instead of expanding to accomodate the increase in population, the CCGs are actually proposing reducing the amount of secondary acute space available to children, adults and pensioners in desperate need!

Yes, it will reduce in size to a small acute/trauma hospital on the outskirts of Lostock. The other hospitals in Chorley and Preston will be sold-off for their estate value to pay for the smaller community 'Hub' clinics called 'multispecialty community provider' (MCP) clinics, run in the future by VirginCare or other private venture (there is no other way due to underfunding of the NHS).

Page 19 map = no hospital for Chorley
Page 20 map = no hospital for Preston
Page 21 map = only 20 GP practices on 3 sites/polyclinics for South Ribble

One of the most worrying features of the CCGs 'STP' delivery plan is that in its opening paragraph on page 24 it concludes the [STP] process with a pre-consultation business case.

It's nothing to do with clinical outcomes only financial stability, and as usual the patient has the last say...

So why has the Tory government decided to make up losses in Social care by proposing to increase Council Tax?

For a start, we've already been paying for social care through an increase in council tax, and it's been going disastrously wrong.

Wealthier areas with a higher council tax base raise as much as three times more than poorer areas where the need for social care is much higher. It's not hard to see how this increases 'inequality'

Despite the growing numbers of older people, council funding for social care has been slashed by £5bn since 2010. Many organisations that provide care are struggling to stay afloat and are handing contracts back to councils.  Click for More...

 

Download the CCG Local Delivery Plan, the CCGs STP submission..