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11 Feb 2003 : Column 758—continued
Care Homes
8. Hugh Bayley (City of York): What steps he is taking to increase the number of nursing home beds and improve domiciliary nursing and social care services in areas with a shortage of such beds and services. [96680]
9. Mr. Mark Prisk (Hertford and Stortford): How many places are available in care homes in England; and if he will make a statement. [96881]
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Jacqui Smith): The latest data show that there were some 528,000 places in care homes for residential or nursing care in England. On 23 July, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced new targets for older people's services, along with an investment of £1 billion to meet them. Those funds will help to provide 500,000 more pieces of community equipment, 70,000 more social care intermediate care places, 30,000 more home
care services of over five hours a week, and higher fees for care homes where councils judge that that is necessary.
Hugh Bayley : My hon. Friend will be aware that there is a continuing, acute shortage of nursing-care beds in and around York, so it was with great pleasure that I noted that last April the Government made £1.4 million available to my local primary care trust to provide intermediate care. Regrettably, however, there is still no plan for where those beds will be provided, let alone a construction process. Will my hon. Friend speak to the local primary care trust and get a clear statement of the time scale for providing those much-needed additional beds? When she does so, will she also look at the possibility of the PCT providing 24-hour district nursing services, which might reduce the demand for beds, because some people who would otherwise go into care homes would instead be able to return to their own homes?
Jacqui Smith: My hon. Friend makes an important point about the need to develop intermediate care as a bridge between hospital and home, and often as a way of keeping people out of hospital in the first place. Notwithstanding his concern about the additional investment, I am pleased to note that in his area there are an extra 579 places for intermediate care, over and above that provided in 1999–2000. Given that we are, in addition, making extra investment available, as he pointed out, I undertake to look into the time scale for the development of further additional intermediate care provision in my hon. Friend's constituency.
Mr. Prisk: In my constituency, yet another care home, Park house, has just closed, turning away many vulnerable people. Rather sadly, a few days later, three of the former residents had passed away. Because the Government's care standards apply to newly registered homes, there is a financial barrier to us being able to turn that back into an operating establishment. Does the Minister recognise that the standards are a barrier to new homes being opened? Will she be more flexible about the way in which the standards are applied, so that new home places can be provided?
Jacqui Smith: As I discussed with the National Care Homes Association last Thursday, the introduction of national standards is an important step forward for provision, and many providers have argued for it over the years. The hon. Gentleman knows that we have been and are being flexible about environmental care standards with respect to existing homes, but we have a responsibility to improve provision for our older people in the care home sector, in particular. That is why we have maintained the standards, which received wide agreement for new provision and extensions to existing provision. Alongside that, we have ensured that local authorities have the investment necessary to pay the level of fees that will allow us to improve quality for our older people, not just in care home provision, but more broadly across the services that they need.
Mr. Harry Barnes (North-East Derbyshire): How many hospitals employ social worker teams to draw down provision of care in the community? I understand
that the Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton), visited Ealing hospital, which has done pioneering work on bed blocking. The interconnection between that and care provision in the community is extremely important.
Jacqui Smith: Increasingly, with the extra investment made available to social services departments, they are taking more seriously their responsibility to maintain a presence in hospitals and to consider particularly the needs of older people and ways of ensuring that they are discharged more quickly, and they are undertaking that work more effectively. I know that there are also increasing numbers of accident and emergency departments where there are social workers and other professionals who can ensure that older people who come through that route can get care elsewhere, if they do not need to be admitted to hospital. My hon. Friend makes an important point which, with reference to the hospital discharge work book that I mentioned earlier, we are promoting through new investment and new guidance.
Mr. Simon Burns (West Chelmsford): When will the Minister come out of her perpetual state of denial and recognise that there is a serious crisis in long-term care? Does she fully appreciate the distress and the problems being caused in certain parts of the country because of the loss of more than 60,000 beds over the past five years and the reduction of more than 100,000 care home packages for domiciliary care for households? More and more individuals cannot find places in their immediate vicinity and have to move further from home, family and friends to find a bed. The Minister cannot continue to live in her Alice in Wonderland-type world. She must face facts and come up with realistic ways of addressing the problem, which is causing so much distress to so many in this country.
Jacqui Smith: I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need a realistic approach in addressing the problem. In particular, we need to provide local authorities with the resources to be able to support the kind of provision that is necessary. [Hon. Members: "Where has the money gone?"] Out of the £300 million that we made available as the building care capacity grant, over £7 million went to the hon. Gentleman's county of Essex, which, for example, spent £413,000 to create new posts for older people's mental health services and spent money on additional assessor capacity and additional home-care training places. That is why it has been able to reduce delayed discharges from 16.9 per cent. in 1997 to 3.4 per cent. in September 2002 and to increase intermediate care places by 139 over 1999.
We live in the real world, but we provide the money in order to ensure that that real world can be made a reality for the people that we serve, unlike hon. Members opposite.
Teenage Cancer
11. Rev. Martin Smyth (Belfast, South): If he will make a statement on provision for teenage cancer patients. [96683]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Ms Hazel Blears): We are aware that teenagers with cancer have specific needs, and we are taking action to meet them. We are providing funding to enable more teenage cancer patients to enter trials of the latest treatments, and we are looking at how teenagers can participate in the design of health services centred around their particular needs.
Rev. Martin Smyth: I thank the Minister for that answer. Will she commend the work of the Teenage Cancer Trust? Because these units have been set up, cancer specialists have noticed a 15 per cent. improvement in recovery rates. Surely this improvement should be spread throughout the country.
Ms Blears: I am delighted to welcome the work of the Teenage Cancer Trust. I have no doubt that by providing an environment in which teenagers with cancer can be together it is aiding their recovery. It must be devastating for any family to discover that their teenager has cancer, and providing them with services appropriate to their needs is extremely important to us as a Government. I am hopeful that the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health will begin to draw the views of young people, children, teenagers and adolescents into designing our health services, an area that has been lacking in the past. The Teenage Cancer Trust can help to show us the way in this regard.
Mr. David Kidney (Stafford): A great deal of interest in this subject was shown at the palliative services care conference, hosted by my local primary care trust, that I attended last Friday. Can my hon. Friend say what success the Government are having this year in getting to the front-line services, especially the services provided by hospices, the £50 million of additional spending they announced last year for palliative care services for cancer patients and those others who suffer from terminal conditions?
Ms Blears: My hon. Friend raises an extremely important area of concern to hon. Members across the House. He highlights the fact that we have put an extra £50 million into specialist palliative care. We have set up a unique mechanism, a national partnership group involving the voluntary sectors—Help the Hospices and all those other partners who work in this area with us—chaired by the national cancer director, Professor Mike Richards, to ensure that the money not only reaches the front line but is spent in a way that makes a real difference to people in these circumstances. I look forward with great enthusiasm to the work of that national partnership group, which will make a significant impact in this very important area of care.
Mr. Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton): The Minister will be aware of the success of King Edward VII hospital in Midhurst in treating teenage and other cancer patients. The residents of west Sussex are grateful to the Government for the two-month moratorium for that hospital. Can the hon. Lady set out the latest position on whether the hospital will remain open for the long term?
Ms Blears: As the hon. Gentleman knows from the debate in Westminster Hall just a couple of weeks ago,
the NHS has been working closely with the liquidator of King Edward VII hospital, and we have been able to provide some interim support to the hospital to ensure that it can continue to care for NHS patients. Clearly, the situation is still developing. The matter is in the hands of the liquidator, and the NHS will continue to work extremely closely with the hospital because our top priority is to ensure that NHS patients get continuity of high-quality care. That will be our foremost priority in relation to King Edward VII hospital.
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