A report by The Independent today has claimed that 50,000 people will have to leave work this year to care for someone with dementia. The negative impact done by dementia to families, local communities and businesses represents a threat to ‘the fabric of our society’, the health secretary Jeremy Hunt has said, following a new report which revealed that just this year alone, 50,000 people will leave work to care for someone close to them.
Elsewhere, agencies should ensure people recruited as carers can speak English before placing them in vulnerable people’s homes, a government adviser has said in a BBC report.
Dr Shereen Hussein, scientific adviser to the Department of Health, said to the BBC that poor language skills have the potential to lead to bad care and abuse.
The BBC also reports that due to a lack of beds, mental health patients in England are being forced to seek treatment in other NHS facilities up to hundreds of miles away, new research has found.
The research has revealed that number of patients travelling to seek emergency treatment has more than doubled in two years, from 1,301 people in 2011-12 to 3,024 in 2013-14.
Health minister Norman Lamb said long distant treatment was a ‘last resort’.
Papers including the The Telegraph and The Daily Mail are leading on Pulse’s exclusive story on the motion that GP leaders will discuss whether the GPC should charge patients for appointments at the LMC conference later this month.
The motion, put to conference by the agenda committee and set to be proposed by Wiltshire LMC on the day, suggests general practice is ‘unsustainable in its current format’ and that ‘it is no longer viable for general practice to provide all patients with all NHS services free at the point of delivery’.
