Payouts for social care patients

By Mithran Samuel on February 13, 2008 in Adults, Children

Payouts for social care patients

The National Health Service has paid out £180m in compensation to people with continuing care needs whom it moved into the means-tested social care system.

The bill is the latest stage in a decade-long saga that began in the mid-1990s when the health service started shifting care for deeply dependent patients whose condition could no longer be improved medically but who required continuing nursing as well as social care.

Checking the Facs

The tension between fair access to care services and the personalisation agenda is evident on a number of levels. Where the latter is based around self-assessment, self-determination, choice and individually-geared support focused on a wide definition of health and wellbeing, the former is reliant on tightly circumscribed categorisation, standardisation, consistency of treatment and explicit decision-making.

What might happen is that the two systems run on parallel tracks as councils begin to engage with individual budgets, but this cannot be sustained, and at some point they will collide. The principles of personalisation challenge the fundamental operating system of Facs.

Hospitals treat 8,000 drunk children each year

The number of school-age children needing medical treatment after binge drinking has soared by nearly 40 per cent in just six years.

The South West reported an 80 per cent increase to 829 children – more than two a day – in 2006-07. New figures show 22 under-18s were admitted to hospital in England every day in the first full year after 24-hour drinking was introduced to pubs and bars.

A fifth of children raised by families in the UK live on benefits

One in five British children is growing up in a family dependent on state handouts, shocking figures show. In some regions almost half of all youngsters are in households claiming out-of-work benefits, the figures uncovered by the Conservative Party through parliamentary questions show.

Pensioners hit hardest by inflation because of food and heating costs

Pensioners face an inflation rate nearly a third higher than Britain’s official figure, according to a study.

The official rate rose to 2.2 per cent last month, its highest since last summer, the Office for National Statistics said yesterday.

But the rate for pensioners is 32 per cent higher at 2.9 per cent, researchers for investment firm Alliance Trust found, because they are hardest hit by rises in the price of food and fuel.

Every child in school numbered for life

All 14-year-old children in England will have their personal details and exam results placed on an electronic database for life under a plan to be announced tomorrow.

Colleges and prospective employers will be able to access students’ records online to check on their qualifications. Under the terms of the scheme all children will keep their individual number throughout their adult lives, The Times has learnt. The database will include details of exclusions and expulsions.