Southern Charm XL | Page 25

When Labour lost power in the 2010 general election, I said I’d take to the streets if this Tory-led government tried to privatise the NHS and I did, campaigning for the Drop the Bill campaign. But the Health and Social Care Act was voted through in 2012, with the Lib Dem support of their Tory masters in the Lords and Commons. The Labour NHS pledge Burnham speaks with great passion and conviction about the NHS and reforms to bring about whole-person care, making the case for one budget and one system, caring for the whole person. One Labour Party conference delegate in Brighton this autumn evoked the memory of Beveridge and the setting-up of the welfare state when she called for the Burnham Report, to herald a rebirth of the NHS. Burnham wants to see council-led health and well-being boards commissioning all care, while hospital trusts would become integrated providers of acute, mental and social care. It now costs an estimated £4 million a week to keep people in hospital, because the social care system has broken down and cannot support them in their homes. In an era of an ageing society, the way older people are treated by both the NHS and the social care system is more pertinent than ever. People in their late eighties and nineties often have complex needs, integrating the three services for physical, mental and social care makes sense. A first step should be the development of integrated services in the NHS for long-term conditions, including people with dementia and their carers. “Hospitals are now permitted to earn up to half their income from treating private patients, meaning longer waits for NHS patients” Families report the need for better co-ordination of care – a single point of contact for all of their parents’ needs for example – rather than the current disjointed experience, which often involves no continuity of care-givers; having to repeat the same information over and over again to various people who come through the door as carers, with confusion for the individual needing care revolutionise.it 24