Crisis in Social Care Adding to Problems in NHS, Says Minister

The crisis in social care is adding to the problems already facing the NHS, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Wes Streeting has said.
Streeting said challenges arising in social care “are presenting either at the NHS’s front door or clogging up the exit doors of hospitals,” meaning that many of the issues facing the health service “are driven by social care.”
There is “a real crisis in social care,” the minister said during a fringe event at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool on Sunday.
He added, “I think people in this country are genuinely shocked when they need social care to find out how expensive it is and how poor the quality of social care is.”
“The challenge we’ve got in health and social care is enormous. It’s the worst crisis in the history of the National Health Service,” he said.
Responding to the Darzi report’s findings earlier this month, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said that the NHS needs fundamental reform. But citing inefficiencies and falls in productivity in the current system, Starmer said he was not prepared to use any more of taxpayers’ money to fix the NHS.
“No more money without reform,” the prime minister said, adding that the service must “reform or die.”
Streeting echoed the prime minister’s calls for the NHS to reform, saying that otherwise the service faced an “existential threat” from a combination of rising chronic disease, an aging population, and rising cost pressures.
The interim report by Dr. Penny Dash said the failings were impeding the CQC in its ability to spot poor performance at care homes, GP practices, and hospitals during the inspection process. Some of Dash’s findings include health and social care settings not being reinspected for several years, with one NHS hospital having not been rated since June 2014.
Dash’s findings prompted Streeting to brand the CQC  “not fit for purpose.”
The Department for Health and Social Care has since appointed Professor Sir Mike Richards, a senior cancer doctor, to review CQC assessments. The government also has increased oversight of the CQC, with the body updating the department regularly on its progress in implementing Dash’s recommendations.
Kate Terroni, the interim chief executive of the CQC, said the watchdog accepted in full Dash’s findings and recommendations and was committed to increasing the number of inspections and strengthening its senior level health care expertise.