Select Committee on Health Minutes of Evidence


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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