Memorandum by Age Concern England
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES
(HSS 34)
10. CONCLUSION
10.1 The needs of some older people for
services, treatment, care and equipment, and the current funding
systems for such support, inevitably means that they will need
to make contact with health, housing and social services authorities
in order to access help.
10.2 Such contact can be fraught with problems,
and is made particularly difficult by disputes between authorities,
or by an agency's refusal to be involved in, or delay, providing
or arranging the necessary support when it is needed.
10.3 In some areas, it appears that support
is only available once an individual has reached a point of crisis.
10.4 Age Concern believes that:
— such situations are neither sustainable
nor desirable. We reiterate our belief in the urgent need for
the Government to identify core continuing care services which
must be provided or arranged by health and local authorities and
national criteria for eligibility to these services for individuals.
Age Concern remains unconvinced that other measures will provide
older people with the certainties they need from health and social
services, now and for the future: that appropriate services will
be easily accessible, of a sufficient standard and made available
when these are required.
December 1997
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