council service cuts add to coronavirus misery

Geoff Driver - council leader

Lancashire County Council Cuts to Health & Wellbeing Services add to Coronavirus misery

According to latest recorded coronavirus death toll figures*, the UK mortality rate due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) stands at 12.15%.

That's over four times higher than the 3% Boris Johnson and his health advisers forecast mid March.

Social Isolation

Dementia is the highest killer in the UK today. Previous studies have shown that social isolation, or having few interactions with others, is associated with an increased risk of dementia and cognitive decline.

The support to socially isolated families before the outbreak was cut by Lancashire county council last year.

The health & wellbeing servcies of people in Lancashire helps vulnerable people with issues such as Social isolation - loneliness, few or poor social skills and those who find themselves in difficult circumstances - family finance, employment, education and so on.

All these services, which included dementia patients, were STOPPED by the Tory controlled County Council just before the coronvairus outbreak last December.

Advice ignored

At the time, civil servant advisors warned Lancashire county council (LCC) they were creating a 'false economy' since the social return on investment (SROI) for services to be closed was seven-fold, and cuts in these areas would need to be accounted for in other service areas. Their advice was ignored and LCC went ahead anyway.

The proposal to end the Lancashire wellbeing service (LWS) was purely financial as LCC have provided no evidence that demand has exceeded supply and no business case has been proposed to replace the LWS with other services.

Vulnerable people using the wellbeing service have literally been thrown on the scrapheap, and now they have the added burden of having to contend with social isolation due to the coronavirus.

We are now all paying the price of social isolation due mainly to the complacency and arrogance of the unelected Prime Minister and his handling of the viral outbreak in the early warning stages.

And it could be sometime before the lockdown is lifted.

But hey ho, not to worry, due to the flagging economy, ministers are now considering balancing the results of health implications due to the lockdown and those due to the virus and whether to ease the lockdown earlier than forecast.

Well we all know what happens when this government make forecasts.

Either way, the ill-thought out and misjudged errors they made is going to finish off many UK citizens, whether social isolation is lifted or otherwise.. the damage is done, yet the death toll due to this awful virus continues to rise...

Related/Links

*8.4.2020 UK recroded infected 73,758 deaths 8,958

Social Return on Investment (SROI) analysis

This document commissioned by LCC LWS in December 2017 proved the need for the Lancashire Wellbeing Service in terms of the benefits vs financial input.
SROI analysis showed the that LWS creates positive impacts for its service users, for their family members, and for associated partner services of LWS.

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