Keir Starmer is making big, conflicting, and unrealistic promises on health, without a clear plan for delivering them, which is setting Labour up to fail.
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I so agree, for he is doing what all governments are doing and have done for years and that is completely ignore an essential part of health and that is social care.
While not administered by health (NHS), but should have been, for it is administered through Local Authorities, for social care and the NHS are so part of each other and one can’t exist without the other. If one goes the other will certainly follow.
So, funding for social care, staffing issues and so much more is just as important, if not more so, than for the NHS, but no government is, has been and in the future apparently wishing to admit to.
Social care workers are so poorly paid that people are not wishing to enter the care profession or if they do, there are too much insufficiency of them to make any differences. Their pay rates need to be starting around £14/15 per hour and not the current rates of around £11 per hour.
This leads to great insufficiencies in social care and in many instances no social care completely. Thus leading to cause much health inequalities creating many areas of health deteriorations, which creates more need for social care and much more needs for the NHS to deal with.
This is not just in social care relating to care homes for the elderly, but also much increasing needs for both children and all adults in home care, supported living, respite, hospices and much more.
Families have been doing all they can and much more amounting to a saving in 2021 of £193 billion within the UK, an increase in the £132 billion in 2015, so if it was not for families, social care would be in a much worse state than it is. While this is very bad and getting worse day by day, all due to governments taking no notice. Is this by ignorance or by deliberate design, I feel the latter as UK governments don’t care.
By ignoring the state of social care not only are the persons in need of social care deteriorating in health, but their families also, thereby, eventually causing more demands on social care and then so much more on the NHS. This is nowhere near sustainable, so extremely urgent actions are required by government, but our currently government even only offering a miniscule amount, then halving it and then eventually delaying until 2025, with no guarantee on resolving then.
So the outlook for social care is so very bleak and if Starmer, should he become Prime Minister in 2024, his so unrealistic NHS outcomes will never be delivered, unless he first delivers on social care, which on today’s understanding could need anywhere between £8-12 billion initially with much more on a regular yearly basis for social care only and then will he be able to also concentrate on the NHS.
Very dire indeed and so, so urgent.
Source: Labour’s promises on health are setting the party up to fail | The BMJ