Social care confusion

Posted on May 28, 2017 by john graham

I have argued in this blog for years that the only way to release significantnt resources to pay for good quality social for older people is to unlock the equity many older people have in their houses and then expect all those who can, to pay for there own care.

The problem is that there are many barriers that stop this from happening and it will probably take a crisis to clear them away.

the problem is :-

  • When the NHS was established nobody expected longevity to increase as much as it has, nor did they anticipate the epidemic of dementia in these extended years.
  • Older people and their relatives have been led to believe that all health care should be free, even though this has never actually been the case.
  • Dementia, in particular, has always been an area of deliberate obfuscation, because firstly of the difficulty of diagnosing it; secondly, the relatively high cost of lengthy stays in residential care; and thirdly, the perhaps the understandable reluctance of the NHS to accept it as a health problem, which has passed the responsibility for caring for people with dementia to either their relatives, often an elderly spouse, or handed it over to Social Services.

The fact that the older elderly population will double in the next 10 years means that ” the crisis” is upon us now, as the pressures of these issues escalate.      These changing demographics demand an answer, even if compassion does does not.

The Government was already slowly edging toward the issues with a promised report in the autumn.    Now this has been overtaken by the forthcoming snap general election and a hastily cobbled together manifesto.     In an opportunistic, bold and maybe foolhardy move, Theresa May included a proposal to address the social care funding shortfall by shifting more of the burden on to older people, by including the value of their house in the means test evaluation, but allowing them to defer the payment in their lifetime.

I believe this is the right thing to do, but the hasty announcement has mas made its implementation doubly difficult.      Opposition parties have cynically seized on the idea and deemed it a death tax.    The media have not helped with shallow analysis and simplistic headlines. Leaving the population as a whole ill-informed and ill disposed to the proposal.

 Not a great start to reforming social care !

Posted in ELDERLY UK POLICY, Residential Care | 1 Comment

G.P.’s Charging Fees.

Posted on May 23, 2017 by john graham

GP’s are once again raising the issue of charging for an appointment to see your GP.     (You can see all my earlier posts on this subject by clicking on GP’s in the Tag Cloud )

You can tell an election is coming !   The issue has been talked up by the doctors union at the last three elections.   Each time all the political parties have run away shouting  the sacrosanct mantra “the NHS should be free at the point of delivery”.     I am far from convinced that charging is a good idea, BUT, something has to change.

  • More and more GP’s are retiring early.
  • Many practices are unable to recruit new doctors.
  • Some practices are closing altogether.
  • New patients can’t easily get registered.
  • Appointments can be difficult to get quickly.
  • Being not able to see your GP often means more people turn up at A&E.
  • If they are elderly and are admitted, they often don’t come out quickly.
  • Gradually the whole system clogs up.

Underlying this situation is the dramatic growth in the older population and the high levels of chronic illness in the older age group. Nobody wants to face up to this situation, but the G P’s can’t avoid it — unless they retire !

There is a good evaluation of GP’s charging fees commissioned by the Kings Fund not too long ago.    A £10 appointment applied to everyone would raise between £3.5  to £4.5 billion for the NHS.     It concluded it probably would not work well and could have unintended consequences. ( You can see it by clicking on the following link  https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/reports/thenhsif/what-if-people-were-to-pay-10-to-see-a-gp/)

So what is to be done :-

  1.  It has been suggested that they try a few limited pilots of charging, with exemptions for those people on welfare benefits or recurrent illness.    You can see this would be controversial straight away.    
  2. I would open some high street shops as walk-in centres manned by GP’s and nurses.  Open nine till five seven days a week, they would charge a standard £25 for a consultation and more if treatment was subsequently provided.  If you didn’t want to pay for treatment, you would be referred to the NHS and join the waiting list.  This should reduce the pressure on GP services.

 

Could be the start of a new era in health care with a focus on well-being and healthy living.

Posted in N.H.S. | Tagged | 3 Comments

Last Laugh Looney Party on PACKAGING

Posted on May 21, 2017 by john graham

This week the Packaging Association had its annual awards ceremony.  I will bet there were not many older people there !

In this election people are not taking the LLLP seriously enough.     So today we are announcing our new policy on one of the big concerns for older people, which stops them quietly getting on with their lives in a stress free way.

PACKAGING

We have talked about this over and over in this blog.   ( See earlier blogs on this subject by clicking on PACKAGING in the Tag Cloud)

Arthritic fingers don’t make unwrapping easy and shrink wrapping is almost impossible to remove.      So the LLLP  PROPOSES THAT  POLITICIANS SHOULD BE SHRINK WRAPPED FOR A DAY TO SEE HOW THEY WOULD LIKE IT 😀

Child proof bottle tops are no better.     They will also be outlawed in future. if you vote for the LLLP.   Little children should be taught to not be nosey and leave things alone that don’t belong to them !

Then there are all those heavy, bulky, stapled together, glued, tied and taped cardboard boxes, which are usually twice the size of what’s inside.    They have got to go!     How many injuries have happened trying to open these things ?      That is probably why the NHS is clogged up with old people 😀

 

 

The LLLP NO-PACKAGING POLICY has been fully costed and the £1.45 billion saved will be spent on the NHS to employ courteous nurses who actually speak to old people 😀

Posted in SMILES | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Last Laugh Looney Party on Gadgets

Posted on May 18, 2017 by john graham

The world is getting too complicated.    We are being overloaded with too many things.    I learned that from my de-cluttering days.    The Last Laugh Looney Party will lead us forward into a much simpler life.        A life with less possessions, less things to go wrong, less new fangled gadgets which are supposed to make life easier, BUT DONT.

If we are successful in the election, every house-hold will be restricted to a maximum of THREE GADGETS.    You can choose any three, but no more :-

  • COOKER —- number 1 choice for most people, but some may decide to eat out all the time or live on salads 😀
  • TELEVISION —- desired by many, but remember there are a lot less channels to watch and no remote controls, so you will have to get up to change channels.
  • speaking of WATCHES or a CLOCK —– you could have one, but what is the point, when you have all the time in the world in retirement 😀
  • SCOOTER —- no cars remember, alternatively roller skates could be fun .
  • COMPUTER —– desirable to keep a link to the outside world and  could double as a telephone, a clock, a sound system, and probably a lot more that I haven’t discovered yet ?????
  • The TEASMAID,  the BREADMAKER, the COFFEE MACHINE, the  all singing,  all dancing, healthy eating, BLENDER all of which have been used at least once before they were put in the back of the kitchen cupboard three years ago can all go to the local museum 😫
  • Along with the ROWING MACHINE, which never did get me fit enough for the boat race.
  • WASHING MACHINE —– can be replaced with a wash board or just a large flat stone in the garden.    The TUMBLE DRYER can now be a simple line outside.
  • CARS  —-  are gadgets, but you won’t need one if you move to one of the LLLP Island Resorts.   Mobility scooters will be exempt from the gadget rules.

Immediately after the results of the election, there will be a massive de-cluttering.    All surplus gadgets will given  to charity and then passed on to people who don’t have enough gadgets.

This LLLP MASSIVE GIVE-AWAY should secure enough votes to get them elected with a big majority.   This policy is fully costed and should save older people £millions in insureance premiums.

Posted in SMILES | Tagged | 2 Comments

My Garden Age 3

Posted on May 16, 2017 by john graham

It’s been a three years since I last wrote about my garden.  (You can see all the earlier posts on my garden by clicking on “My Garden Age” in the TAG CLOUD).

This year has been a particularly good year for Bluebells and right now in the middle of May my garden is absolutely full of them.  There seem to be more and more of them every year, rather like the numbers of older people in our society.  I think society should learn to appreciate older people for the beauty and colour they bring to each new Spring.

The bluebells capture the whole garden for a few weeks in May.     A woodland retreat wrested from the daffodlil spring.

Let’s see what joys Summer will bring.  Perhaps older people will be celebrating a whole new outlook on later life after the 2017 General Election.  When, who knows, the Last Laugh Loony Party may just get elected, or at least be in a coalition where they hold the balance of power.  That will certainly bring a lot of wisdom, beauty and colour to the Brexit negotiations.

Tagged | 1 Comment

Social Care Class Action on Bingo

Posted on May 14, 2017 by john graham

Amid all the recent concern about the shortage of funding for older people needing care, “Social care ” hit the headlines today from a rather unusual source.   This is The Times front page headline for the 10 May :-

” Stop splitting up elderly couples “

It is a report of a speech given at the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services Annual Conference in Stafford.  The speech was given by Sir James Munby, President of the family division of the High Court.   The judge in full flight rebuked his audience for not keeping elderly couples together, when one has to move into residential care.     Warming to his subject, and no doubt acutely aware of his approaching retirement, here are some of his choice words :-

  • “Separating elderly couples against their wishes must stop”
  • “Officials should give higher priority to happiness and spend less time complying with procedures and safety rules”
  • “Separting couples……… was absolutely shocking and a profound indictment of our society”

Strong stuff from a top High Court Judge.    It is a wonder he didn’t lock up half of his audience there and then !     He is right in much of what he had to say, but of course it has been going on for years.   Residential Care has always separated older couples.  No partner, if they didn’t need care themselves, would move into a care home.  So it’s not at all surprising that couples are split up, but it’s certainly not a compassionate way of looking after couples who would prefer to stay together in the final years of their lives.   Extra care housing was designed to deal with precisely this eventuality, but unfortunately there is far too little of it, so it is not an option for the majority of older people.

It is hard to blame Social Services, because they are driven by the financial constraints of Central Government, which has led them to cut back on domiciliary care, which does allow people to stay together in their own homes.   Compassion has for long been replaced by expediency.

The Judge also had some choice insights into life in residential care :-

  • ” Forcing older people to take part in group social activities, such as line-dancing and bingo nights could leave them miserable “
  • ” you are actually putting someone in a regime which may not allow them to smoke, or a regime where for their own good they may be heavily persuaded to indulge in the kind of collective jollification which they would have loathed at home “

The Judge is motoring now, because these comments apply to all people who move into residential care, not just couples.     He is creating an argument for older residential care residents  bringing thousands of cases to court for “forceable line-dancing” or “compulsive bingo playing” or “wrongful collective jollification”.

Court should be fun when the cases come about and older people will have the support of all those legally-aided no-win-no-fee lawyers 😀.  What a day out that will be, much more interesting than bingo or line-dancing.

Posted in Care Funding, Residential Care | 6 Comments

Last Laugh Looney Party Fourth Half Manifesto.

Posted on May 11, 2017 by john graham

This is the last segment of our 2017 LLLP MANIFESTO.   ( You can see the earlier ideas by clicking on ” LLLP ” in the TagCloud )

If we are elected we expect to transform the lifestyle of older people for the better and make sure they are valued and respected in society.

We will make their lives EASIER :-

  • By relocating them to age-friendly communities in Island Resorts;
  • By providing them with new purpose-built housing for rent;
  • By releasing their financial resources to fund care and support as they need it;

and SAFER :-

  • GP’s will do most consultations by home visits.
  • Hospitals will see you straight away, there will be no waiting lists.
  • Operations other than day surgery, will be done in brand new LLLP Indian facilities and older patients can take three weeks to recuperate in luxury patient hotels before their free flight home;

and FASTER :-

  • By providing them with traffic free green routes reserved for mobility scooters and a free taxi service for more distant travel;
  • By ensuring all newspapers and other printed documents are simple and easy to read;

And FUN :-

  • On the LLLP RESORT Islands every day will be a Bank Holiday;
  • Temperatures will be warmer because they will be in Fahrenheit ;
  • Everything will be tax-free, there will be no VAT.  And instead of Pound shops, we will have Shilling and Penny Shops, so things will be much cheaper ;
  • There will be good news storeys every day.

Posted in SMILES | Tagged | 2 Comments

Last Laugh Looney Party third half manifesto.

Posted on May 9, 2017 by john graham

This is a continuation of my previous blogs on the Last Laugh Looney Party manifesto.        ( Click on “LLLP”in the TagClooud to see the earlier posts )

Yes, we are allowed a third half  because we have just remembered something else we are not happy with 😀

FONTS

Small print will be BIG PRINT.     Font sizes less than 14 point will be illegal, if the LLLP is elected in June.     Newspaper editors and journalists will be expected to be less verbose and use less words 😀   Specsavers and many other opticians will go out of business 😀    Lengthy LLLP Government reports will be restricted to ONE PAGE 😀

LAWYERS 

Lawyers and  solicitors WILL BE BANNED  —– or GAGGED ——or ONLY ABLE TO WORK AT NIGHT —- or SOMETHING ELSE.   AND be required to use simple plain English in all documents,  with pictures for anything complicated.    AND ONLY USE ONE SHEET OF PAPER WITH LARGE PRINT.

GADGETS 

Almost all new equipment made in this new electronic era is more complex than the simple stuff of earlier years.   User manuals are incomprehensible and the fourteen languages don’t help one bit.    In future the LLLP will ensure all gadgets with more than two buttons will be banned.

TELEVISION  CHANNELS 

T.V. channels will be reduced to a maximum of TEN, any more are confusing.      Repeat programmes will only be repeated once, except for ” Die Hard ”  and all Clint Eastwood movies, which will have a Channel of their own and can be watched at any time.        All adverts will be moved to one channel, which people only need to watch if they need to buy something or if they like incomprehensible jokes and unreadable small print at the bottom of the screen.

The BBC licence fee will be scrapped, when BBC3, BBC4,  BBC5, BBC6, right upto BBC15 are all closed down after it is revealed that nobody ever watches them and it was just a way of recruiting more highly paid BBC executives.

There will be no 24 hour news channel.    In fact there will be lot less news and all news broadcasts will have to start with a  LLLP GOOD NEWS STOREY, introduced by an older person.

PACKAGING

All shops will have to employ LAST LAUGH UNPACKING ASSISTANTS to remove unopenable wrapping before you leave the shop.    Heavy goods must be delivered free to older people at home.   Jars and bottles which are screwed on so tightly that a world wrestling federation world champion could not open them will be able to be returned by older people, who will get double their money back and a free taxi home.

Child proof bottle tops are perfectly understandable to keep out prying little fingers, but for older people they should be replaced at point-of-sale by special age-friendly caps.     Which open when an older person says “Oh for Christs sake ! ” 😀

That is the end of our manifesto, for now, although we reserve the right to change our position if the other parties come up with better ideas later.

Posted in SMILES | Tagged | 4 Comments

2013 Headlines come hauntingly back.

Posted on May 7, 2017 by john graham

One of the good things to come from de-cluttering is that it gives you new ideas for things to write about.     A stored up sense of history.   A temporarily buried time capsule.    A more distant perspective on things that seemed important enough to keep.   The end of  an ” I might need that one day” thought.

So here is one of my early discoveries :-

          A folder of newspaper clippings from 2013.

I used to have files full of these, but the news came faster than I could write blogs, so in my paperless office de-cluttering frenzy I threw them in the rubbish.    This folder escaped the net because it was ‘filed’ in a box in the bedroom 😀

  • “£70million fund to tackle the epidemic of loneliness”
  • “Lonely OAPs’ spend 100 days a year on their own”            As the number of older people grows so does the number of people living on their own.   Technology is leaving many of them behind, because they are unable to keep pace with the new increasingly digital world.   How ironic when it has the opposite impact for the younger generation.  It is hard to see how even £70 million will bring much more than a slight benefit on a relatively small number of people.  I hope they find something that really goes viral for older people.
  • “Hospital ‘death pathway’ bribes will be scrapped”
  • “Let the patients voice be heard by those in charge of the NHS”
  • “NHS writes off elderly patients who don’t want to make a fuss”
  • “More hospitals are failing to treat their patients with dignity”
  • “20,000 patients died needlessly in NHS hospital, says expert”                                                                                             These have been almost every day headlines in all the years since 2013.     The leviathan that the NHS has now become is a money gobbling black hole, immune to any comment, criticism or reform.  It still does great work for many of its patients, but the elderly with complex conditions are usually last in the queue and the queue is getting longer by the day.
  • “With small changes this social care cap can be made to fit”
  • “Families to foot the bill for cost of care for elderly”      Social care is still top of the bill today, although it is eclipsed by Brexit.   This is a convenient smoke screen for politicians, because they still have no idea how to address the issue.   It needs radical reform, but that won’t happen soon.  In the meantime ether families will have to step up or for those without support they will have to struggle on.
Posted in Care Funding, ELDERLY UK POLICY, N.H.S. | 3 Comments

Last Laugh Looney Party second-half manifesto.

Posted on May 4, 2017 by john graham

Since the publication of our Last Laugh Looney Party manifesto the opinion polls have been very encouraging.      So far we have received 100% support from older people, admittedly the poll was rather small, in fact it was just the two people who commented on my post.       Still the facts don’t lie and 100%  is  100% !

 Sadly, I have not had any responses from Scotland so far, perhaps they don’t want to move to the Outer Hebrides or maybe it is just because I referred to them as dour.       In an effort to improve the LLLP appeal north of the Border we have decided to extend our demand for sovereignty to include the Inner Hebrides.    Of course this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that there are a lot of very good whiskey distilleries located there.       Although the tax revenues will come in handy and we do have sound medical reasons for consuming the odd tipple or two.

I am still waiting for my invitation to go on the Andrew Marr politics programme, but I haven’t heard anything yet.

Here are the second-half ideas to be added to our  manifesto :-

SCOUNDRELS

There would be a new law against conning older people.      It would apply to unsolicited phone callers who tell you ” your computer has been hacked and they can fix it”; people who knock on your front door and say “I am not trying to sell you anything”; bank managers and insurance salesmen who fail to explain things in a simple way and leave you befuddled; opticians and hearing aid vendors who tell you every year ” your sight / hearing has deteriorated and you need to spend even more money with us”; and last but not least,  most politicians who promise the earth before an election and then disappear for the next three or four years and forget the promises they made.

Their punishment would be to have to stand in a very public place every Sunday and say ” I am sorry, very sorry ” to every older person that passes by, until 100 older people say ” OK but don’t do it again”.    If they do, then repeat offenders will have to spend a day every week for a year in a wheelchair wearing incontinence pads, ear muffs to make it hard to hear things and glasses that they can’t see clearly through.      Then they might learn to be kinder to older people in future 😀😀😀😀😀

TELEVISION PRESENTERS & ASSORTED ACTORS

All of them must learn to speak clearly at the Sylvia Peter’s School of Good Diction and use no slang or acronyms or swear words.     At least half of them should be over pension age and have grey, white or no hair.

IMPERIAL MEASURES

On day one after the election our new Island Government we will reintroduce ” feet and inches” —- miles never seemed to go away anyway.    ” Pounds and ounces”  — will be back too —–  who ever understood a kilo of potatoes and grams are far to small to make sense.    As for litres well !    Only Germans drink litres of beer and we never got round to litre-sized milk bottles  —- so we will go back to “gallons and pints” and ” bushels and pecks and rods and poles and perches” they were so much more understandable.

Just for good measure the LLLP will revert back to our former and totally unique currency of  Pounds, Shillings and Pence.    Oh and Farthings.    Things seemed so much cheaper with farthings !    We will no longer be linked to decimal coinage  and  the Euro will only be legal currency for supermarket trolleys, public toilets and parking meters.  Although of course without cars on our Islands, there won’t be any parking meters, or speeding fines or traffic wardens or road fund licences or congestion charges.    If you get congestion you need to go to the doctor.

And while we are at it, we will get the weather forecasters to speak English and only talk in ” Fahrenheit “.     When the temperatures are in the 70’s and 80’s again it will all feel much warmer.

BANK HOLIDAYS

In an effort to catch up in the opinion polls comrade Jeremy Corbyn and what is left of the Labour Party ( in fact nothing is left of the Labour Party these days ) have promised to introduce four new bank holidays.      The Last Laugh Looney Party would just like to point out that for older people on our sovereign Islands —- every day will be a bank holiday 😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀

VOTE FOR THE LAST LAUGH LOONEY PARTY.

Posted in ELDERLY UK POLICY, SMILES | Tagged | 2 Comments